AKA New Moon; Twilight: New Moon
Even before Alice Cullen (Ashley Greene) zooms through the twists and turns of the streets of Italy in a breathlessly fast yellow Porsche, filmmaker Chris Weitz's sequel to Catherine Hardwicke's Twilight reminded me of another big screen adaptation of a bestselling series in Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code.
Italian connection aside, the two seemed like ideal companions since both have a passionate following of readers and the debut films in each respective series were not only duller than even fans would've expected but in fact suffered such lows that they were unintentionally funny and lacking in quality special effects.
While neither of the two series are my particular cup of tea and the flaws stem from the original source material, I must admit that both Da Vinci and Twilight were vastly improved by 2009's still weak-- yet far more watchable-- sequels, Angels and Demons and New Moon respectively.
Despite an overly long running time for both titles, both works delivered a terrific twist that only the avid readers of the books would've seen coming and while Demons was additionally bolstered by the scope of its far more involving plot, New Moon fights its relatively simplistic pouting tween plot of heartbreak by leaving us knocked out at the mindblowingly gorgeous cinematography and production values that were ratcheted up several steps from the first one.
Although it's still pretty unintentionally amusing that every time we see the rather androgynous pretty boy vampire Edward (every tween girl's swoon worthy poster boy Robert Pattinson) walk towards Bella (the talented Kristen Stewart), he seems to be moving in slow motion for laughably smoldering effect, the series gets bonus points for finally letting us non-readers nor Twilight-believers in on just why there is a Team Jacob in the first place when Edward saunters off the scene, believing that his continued relationship with true love Bella is jeopardizing her life.
Nearly comatose and about ready to star in Girl, Interrupted, the crushed Bella reluctantly comes out of her room after what feels like months of pouting to forge a much stronger friendship with Jacob Black (Tyler Lautner) as she charms him into working on a motorbike.
Discouraging his puppy dog crush on her without bothering to stop touching his bare chest and abs as he turns into a toned golden god overnight, Jacob is hopelessly smitten and agrees to help fix the motorcycle without realizing that she's become a senseless adrenaline junkie upon the discovery that every time she takes a major risk she can see Edward however fleetingly.
Fully establishing the love triangle in a long drawn out teasing way that firmly plants this reviewer directly into Team Jacob since Bella's chemistry with Jacob just feels more natural than the stilted dialogue, one second kisses, and intense looks of Edward who lusts for her blood (hello, creepy romantic, anyone?), all characters are in for a major surprise when we learn more about Bella's non-vamp friend.
Although the pacing of the film still moves along like a snail and as director Jason Reitman joked in an Up in the Air Q&A in regard to his Oscar nominated Twilight star Anna Kendrick, overall the films are “a graveyard of acting” since talented performers are given so little with which to work that A-listers like Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning actually feel like they've lost their edge just based on the sleepwalking, phone-it-in style of the performances required.
Of course, it's so amazingly popular that even with cardboard cutouts of Stewart and Pattinson remaining still for two hours it would probably send teenage girls into a Beatles-like screaming frenzy. And while the Blu-ray presentation in particular really overtakes the senses and hides some flaws with its immersive audio and glorious imagery along with endless extras for devotees, overall one still wishes that either plots of the books could be combined to move faster or some liberties could be taken to make the films better meet the expectations of the cinematic medium.
Nonetheless, while it's safe to say that this won't occur in the upcoming adaptations of the rest of the books in the series (including Eclipse and Breaking Dawn), at least with New Moon, Weitz and company took a step in the right direction by hitching a ride in a Porsche that-- stolen by Alice – may as well have belonged to Da Vinci Code characters, the Illuminati.
Text ©2010, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.
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Opening like an Agatha Christie novel or Gosford Park by acquainting us with a group of well-to-do characters vacationing at a Yorkshire estate, the '70s BBC production teases us by making us assume that these characters will be our main protagonists. Obviously, all of our assumptions change when the fiance of Mary Wimsey is found killed and the sight of her brother Jerry hovering over the body is discovered by Mary herself and the leisurely, man-about-globe, Lord Peter returns to England to take up the role of amateur detective alongside his manservant and more or less assistant sleuth Bunter.
Eager to clear his brother's name and figure out why a man's sized ten footprint and a woman's diamond and emerald brooch were found near the crime scene, Wimsey and Bunter work independently and occasionally in tandem with Scotland Yard Detective Parker whom, unlike other officers, truly respects and encourages Wimsey's knack for weeding out what really happened from what's really confusing.
And despite the fact that the set's opening mystery takes place six years after the follow-up title which is set in 1922 and we find a different (and unfortunately not quite as good-humored) actor portraying Bunter in The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, Acorn's decision to open with such an overwhelming complicated yet hilariously entertaining mystery proves to be a most effective one.
While today I would equate his portrayal with James Gandolfini's in The Sopranos, Robbie Coltrane's in Cracker and David Suchet's in Poirot as examples of an actor being perfectly suited to not just the material but the character he's portraying, I can only imagine the delight that the peerless Ian Carmichael possessed and inspired in his utterly charming turn as our flamboyant, quick-witted, slang spewing, sharp-minded whimsical Wimsey.
Delivering the first title Clouds of Witness in the series one hour format spread across two discs in five installments, while I'm partial to that mystery because of the sheer amount of humor and subplots that keep us on our toes, clues that lead to the final resolution feel slightly obvious as it's easy to suspect just where Wimsey's logic goes wrong a full two episodes before he catches on.
This is in stark contrast to the slower paced yet confoundedly bizarre Bellona which will really make you flex your mental muscles as you and Wimsey try to make sense of an elderly brother and sister who die in separate locations on the exact same day. Is it foul play or a truer than fiction coincidence? Whatever the case, the clue to understanding the deaths may lie in deciphering exactly what time each individual perished two different wills reveal who of the man's sons and the sister's niece will inherit a sizable sum that may have been just enough for which to kill.
With the talented but ill-suited Derek Newark filling in for my favorite Bunter Glyn Houston (both of whom worked in various stages on Doctor Who), the humor in Bellona depends more on Wimsey's exchanges with Parker or in his own wry observations than in the more equal partnership we observed with Butner in the former title.
Featuring a timely tie-in to the effects of battle both physically and emotionally on soldiers as one of the suspects and/or would-be heirs is suffering from debilitating shell shock that's left him so unstable he continually loses employment and relies on his wife to be the breadwinner, overall, the surprises that are in store for the viewer in this one plot-wise are far harder to predict.
Of course, the reason for this could also be owed to the fact that Bellona runs just three parts rather than five, nonetheless, by giving us some very unusual suspects and dabbling in everything from poisonous potions to a man not wearing a poppy on armistice day, it proves to be a rather ingenious concoction.
Although as a whole, time has been unkind to this series which aired on Masterpiece Theatre and “inspired the spin-off Mystery!” since even on DVD and presented with Dolby Digital surround, it still has the look, audio, and feel of dated VHS, in the end, that takes very little of the enjoyment out of these cleverly, comically and criminally charming cases.
Text ©2010, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.
Perhaps this is the film that Pedro Almodovar has been building towards throughout his career. Using the feature that launched him internationally-- namely Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown-- as the inspiration for the fictitious film-within-a-film framed inside of the puzzling Broken Embraces and setting the events throughout the film as well as our protagonist's life into two distinctly different time periods, Broken Embraces becomes something both unmistakably Almodovarian as well as something authentically human.
Like the director's best work, it has an emphasis on duplicity and in observing things in a near cracked mirror of memory which plays tricks on individuals, especially when someone manages to survive such an astounding trauma as our leading man does.
Introducing himself as a blind screenwriter who signs his scripts under his old pseudonym of Harry Caine even before he needed a cane to get around back when he was simply Mateo Blanco -- a movie director -- we initially meet the filmmaker on what we sense is a typical morning of pleasant luck. As, forever relying on the kindness of beautiful strangers, the blind man ends up getting more than just an assist across the street and a newspaper reader in a beautiful blonde who engages in a one-morning-stand.
Yet after the seductive good Samaritan shares the printed news that a former producer who spent his money on the last film that Mateo (now solely going by Harry) would ever make has died, the past catches up with Mateo in the most haunting of ways when the son of the deceased-- now calling himself Mr. X-- knocks on his door with the intention of making a scathing film about their relationship.
Wanting to collaborate with the talented Mateo, Mr. X is shot down and our lead -- unable to have seen exactly who his odd visitor was -- goes by his other senses, asking his assistant and young friend to look back into the production files and photos of his final film “Girls and Suitcases” where X's true identity is revealed.
Of course, X marks the spot of not just the past but also what has led to the present as Mateo begins relaying to his assistant just what exactly led up to the point where he had to take up a cane as Harry Caine after losing his true love Lena (Penelope Cruz) and nearly more than just his sight in a terrifying crash.
Gorgeously photographed and bursting with colors so bright and unsaturated that you know if the frames were laundry they'd run like mad, Almodovar's film which may in fact have surpassed the Oscar nominated Volver is a classically stylized masterwork that one can view as a tapestry of the same themes, obsessions, cast mates, movie passion, doppelgangers, doubles and overlapping plot points we've seen throughout his career.
A tale of erotic greed controlling a dangerous love triangle that consisted of Mateo, the now-deceased producer and Penelope Cruz's gorgeous secretary turned actress Lena who takes up with the elderly, cruel producer Ernesto out of guilt when he helps her deathly ill father, Broken Embraces is filled with as many secrets as All About My Mother.
Moreover, it manages to keep you engrossed even when admittedly you begin the extended flashback sequence slightly confused as you try to keep everything in the present and the past separate yet understood, not realizing that of course Almodovar has already come to the conclusion that time is circular and nothing really stays in the past.
Particularly electrifying on Sony Blu-ray where the colors pop and you're able to identify at least a few of upwards of a dozen classic movie references in the film from Blade Runner to Sabrina, Broken Embraces ranks among Almodovar's best films.
Likewise as also one of the most fascinating foreign imports of 2009, the film only gets stronger on a second viewing when you can better connect the pieces with even greater ease than a man tries to repair a coffee table filled photo collage of a broken embrace between Mateo and his long lost love.
Text ©2010, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.
In addition to enlisting the contributions of renowned martial arts star Sho Kosugi and Olympic Taekwando qualifier Rick Yune for the latest Wachowski Brothers collaboration inspired by a fight scene in Speed Racer, power tumbling champions, acrobats, stunt team members and doubles for Jet Li, Donnie Yen and Jackie Chan were hired for the outrageously bloody fourteenth meets twenty-first century tale of a Ninja Assassin.
The only problem is that in the process of bringing together this many skilled professionals, the filmmakers waited until literally the last fifty-three hours to bring aboard a screenwriter who could match the talent onscreen with comic book, Babylon 5 and Changeling scribe J. Michael Straczynski.
And even though he did the best he could to help out his friends, the rush-job shows as there's little to recommend this impressively stylized yet extraordinarily gruesome effort wherein, when dialogue is even uttered, it's either laughable or hints that beneath the surface Straczynski had a much better story he was interested in telling than the simplistic all flash and no substance one served up by Matthew Sand.
As an ardent fan of the genre, I saw the references left and right and appreciated the homage to classic martial arts sagas of revenge but there's so little plot linked together in two distinctly different stories -- think John Grisham's The Pelican Brief meets Fist of Legend -- that ultimately it's an arduous exercise of excess, ego, and every single gallon of fake blood that was available to Warner Brothers' crew during the filming of the movie in Berlin.
Essentially, the heart of the film lies within the charismatic and attractive Raizo (Korean musician Rain) who was taken as a boy along with many other orphans, lost or kidnapped children into various Yakuza clans where he was dominated by the sadistic lead Ozunu warrior (Kosugi).
Trained to treat pain as though it were candy and ask for more, the young Raizo became a ninja weaned on old traditions yet instead of a code of honor, the Ozunu have embraced the code of business, exchanging red for green-- hired out to the highest bidding governments to serve as assassins.
When a beautiful forensic researcher (Naomie Harris) discovers the paper trail that leads from world leaders directly to the Ozunu, the rebellious Raizo is her only hope at staying alive long enough to expose the corruption for good.
Naturally, heads begin to roll as limbs spray geysers full of blood in some purposely over-the-top fight sequences inspired by vintage martial arts classics yet the problem with Assassin is that, when it's combined with today's filmmaking approaches and technology worked right into the story, the fact that we don't feel anything or feel terribly invested into the story beyond a surface level of “don't kill our protagonists” is inexcusable from a storytelling perspective.
Although it's hardly the fault of J. Michael Straczynski since he was invited to the party much too late, for the Wachowskis, this marks the third dud in a row following V for Vendetta and Speed Racer, which, much like this production directed by James McTeigue have moments of artistic precision that simply thrill you as in one sequence where a fight at Interpol headquarters leads directly into high speed Berlin traffic.
Yet, aside from being expertly made as Wachowski passion projects, there's just not enough to make you care enough about these cool, poorly written, displays of eye candy whether it's via Racer's CGI or the pure artery bursting carnage of Assassin which nonetheless will entertain martial arts junkies and give your speakers a workout as throwing stars and chains seem to splice bones from every corner of the room.
Text ©2010, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.
Now Available to OwnTitles: The Heat of the Day; Housewife, 49; Island at War (Miniseries)Talk about an indecent proposal; actress Patricia Hodge's character Stella is damned if she does and damned if she doesn't. Approached rather abruptly in the eponymous heat of the Day by former Singing Detective turned Harry Potter headmaster Albus Dumbledore a.k.a. actor Michael Gambon's tactless Harrison, Stella is put in an impossible position by Gambon's stalker.
Stating his wish to come and go from her flat as he pleases, he tries to blackmail the widow into becoming his mistress by informing her that he has information that her lover (Michael York) is selling secrets to the opposition during World War II and he'll expose his treason if a) she doesn't sleep with him and b) if instead she reports his stupefying war crime to the authorities herself.
Based on the novel by Elizabeth Bowen which was adapted for this 1989 television production by the late Nobel Laureate, Harold Pinter, The Heat of the Day feels like a startlingly intense game of sexual blackmail on both sides as we begin questioning not just Gambon's Harrison but the leads portrayed by Hodge and York as well, should the traitorous accusations be true or false.
Direct and devious like a rousing night at the theatre, the work that originally aired in the United States as part of PBS' Masterpiece Theater lineup makes for an intriguing start to a rather surprisingly offbeat trio of World War II titles from Acorn Media that abandon traditional battlefield fare for unusual points-of-view that ensure Wartime Britain is well-worth your time and investment as distinctly British in scope but unorthodox in approach.
While the opening disc's heroine Stella was a no-nonsense woman of the world, the heroine of the incredibly moving, poignant and delicate effort Housewife 49 is anything but.
Having suffered a breakdown a year before the made for television title begins in Lancashire 1939, which no doubt isn't helped at all by her condescending, bossy husband and the fact that her beloved son is heading off to war, Nella Last (Victoria Wood) starts up a diary as part of the mass observation war project for citizens to document their lives as impacted by Hitler's recent declaration of war on their country.
While at first she's belittled by her husband for her decision to waste time scribbling away nonsense (as he believes it to be), soon as habitual writers understand well, the act of diary keeping serves as a kind of therapy for Nella to process the joys and woes of her existence. And eventually it goes so far as to give her the self-confidence to go out into the world and volunteer for the war effort alongside other women.
Initially intimidated by some of the demands of the group and the domineering women involved who treat bandage preparation as either an excuse for gossiping like a sewing circle or scolding fellow workers like their own children, soon Nella comes to ascertain that she's built her all important second family of like-minded housewife friends.
Proof that no two stories are alike and a valuable reminder for individuals never to rely on snap judgments since we have absolutely no idea what our fellow human beings could be going through at any given moment, Housewife, 49 was not only based on true accounts of Nella Last but also adapted by the woman playing her in the form of actress and screenwriter Victoria Wood.
Obviously benefiting from a woman's touch, additionally as the title implies, it's sure to be of particular interest to mothers, sisters, wives and daughters wanting to know more about life during wartime than the mostly male dominated programming we're offered on a routine basis.
Also available on its own as a multiple disc set, the sweeping miniseries Island at War closes out this excellent selection by Acorn as-- similar to their 2009 release of the vintage series Enemy at the Door, we receive a more modern and thorough examination of citizens who bravely endured German occupation on the tiny channel islands during the second world war.
Although countless citizens fled and some simply packed up their children to send them to London safety as orphans, others either too weak or too strong in body or spirit decided they weren't going to relinquish their homes and way of life by courageously deciding to stay the course.
While in this case the island is fictitious, having seen the reality steeped Enemy at the Door, I can assure you that the situations are all to real in what I personally feel is a superior venture than the '70s more episodic series that introduced too many subplots which were dropped as soon as the episode's final credits ran.
Due to the sheer length of the miniseries which is spread across three DVDs and its wise decision to focus on a select few families as well as a distinct group of German soldiers so that it's much easier to become invested in them emotionally and keep them straight, Island at War is a triumphant look at a part of the British war I was completely unfamiliar with until witnessing it in Door.
Filled with espionage, adventure, danger, romance and hidden secrets as citizens must rely on intuition and existentialism in deciding what they can or cannot abide by during occupation, the miniseries which co-stars Life on Mars actor Phillip Glenister as a German officer is easily the standout title in this above average, solid compilation, bolstered by Acorn's wise choice in ensuring that none of the plots or characters overlap too much.
While fascinating as well for male viewers who are sure to get caught up in Island, Wartime Britain is also a great idea for a Mother's Day set for a history buff due to its more than usual emphasis on female point-of-view.
And considering the fact that it has no shortage of strong, brave female characters, Wartime makes a perfect companion to the recent release Wish Me Luck which showcased housewives and factory girls who put their bravery to bold use by crossing enemy lines to become British spies.
A first rate selection of award-winning highbrow features that also marks the debut of Gambon's turn as an indecent proposer in Heat of Day, Wartime Britain's five-disc set offers you roughly six hundred minutes of stellar drama.Text ©2010, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.
AKA GiantAlthough his nephew Matias would much rather be going head-to-head with his thirty-five year old uncle Jara (Horacio Camandule) via Sony PlayStation, ever since his uncle first caught a glimpse of twenty-five year old Julia (Leonor Svarcas), Jara's sole preoccupation has been on discovering more about her from afar.
And despite his advantage in size as the gigantic fellow referenced in the title, Jara is a soft spoken, shy man who seems to barely exist, perhaps insecurely over-compensating for his size and the fact that he doesn't fit in naturally.
So instead of having the courage to confront the object of his affection directly, he's become a gentle giant-- a Hitchcockian voyeur -- who's more afraid of the woman he follows than the karate student, creature feature loving cleaning Julia would be of him.
Yet, we're only speculating about this point since to be even more powerful, she'd need a better sense of her surroundings as Jara even journeys to the same restaurant she goes to on a date with another man and she has no clue.
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In America, this would provide the recipe for a Taxi Driver meets One Hour Photo scenario considering his lonely man monotony working the night shift occasionally as a bouncer but primarily as the security guard at a grocery store which is where he first sees her through grainy video footage.
However, in first time Uruguayan filmmaker Adrian Biniez's Berlin Film Festival triple award-winning work, it becomes a heartfelt character study about perception as we become voyeurs right along with Jara.
Additionally, this bright and infectious charmer is universal in its presentation of the off-balance nature and effect that the first inklings of new love can have on an otherwise average individual who then must evaluate how to process what they're feeling.
While obviously, it seems bizarre in our era of stranger danger to find what is essentially a stalker movie this appealing, that's all the more reason that Biniez's movie is such a treasure.
Highly recommended, Gigante defies expectation and has an innocence about it that is both reminiscent of boy meets girl movies of yesteryear as well as entirely refreshing for filmgoers who'd like to see the love story told through a different lens... even one that begins through a security camera.
Text ©2010, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.
As a premise alone, there's something instantaneously amusing in imagining Sex and the City's own die hard New Yorker Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) and The Englishmen Who Went Up a Hill but Came Down a Mountain (Hugh Grant) stuck in a cowboy town called Cody, Wyoming. And it's this idea that gets milked for all it's worth in the easily charming if formulaic and non-challenging comedy of remarriage rom-com entry, Did You Hear About the Morgans?
Ill-timed at the box office in arriving at the local multiplex during the same period as another sleeping with my estranged husband Golden Globe nominated offering, It's Complicated starring Meryl Streep, while I can't judge that movie as I have yet to see it, I can say that I did get a kick out of Morgans in a nice, Saturday evening or mildly diverting in-flight movie mode.
As the third collaboration between writer/director Marc Lawrence and actor Hugh Grant, while it's a vast improvement over the recycled feeling of the big screen comedic send-up of VH1 Behind the Music-lite Music and Lyrics, Morgans doesn't have the same level of immediate sexual tension and tennis style volleying back and forth of lines that Grant had with co-star Sandra Bullock in the superior Two Weeks Notice.
Yet this isn't Sarah Jessica Parker's fault to say the least as the two are so darn likable individually and given enough jokes to build up some momentum as it continues, overall, Morgans' humor is more situational than conversational which suffers when Lawrence pulls out the old when animals attack scenario of Hugh Grant opposite a grizzly bear or Sarah Jessica Parker opposite a horse or bull.
Given ample comedic support by a no-nonsense gun-slinging Wyoming version of an Elmore Leonard style Annie Oakley in Mary Steenburgen as the wife of US Marshall Sam Elliott, the film finds the separated married couple thrown together in the Witness Protection Program after they witness a murder together back in New York City.
With a hitman on their tail that's nearly nabbed Meryl Morgan (Parker) once already by bursting into her apartment and forcing her out on a ledge, the two ditch their BlackBerry phones and their co-dependent assistants (including Mad Men's own Elisabeth Moss) for their new identity as the Fosters from Chicago which may go over much smoother if Meryl would stop asking so many questions about life back in New York.
Beautifully captured by cinematographer Florian Ballhaus who lensed the sixth season of Sex and the City, the film which transferred flawlessly to Sony Blu-ray contains the BD-Live extra features of movieIQ along with numerous featurettes, commentary, outtakes, and deleted scenes.
Although as Sam Elliott tells the newcomers when shopping at the movie's Costco-like Bargain Barn that “it's all about bulk,” Lawrence's clever premise may have been better served with a few more close calls or better thrills than bears since it's stretched quite thin for its 103 minute running time.
Despite the fact that his own, actor Hugh Grant has been able to adorably stammer his way out of anything and Parker's acerbic wit melds nicely with his, we do have a bit of trouble buying their relationship completely.
Nonetheless overall, it's a nice time-waster that tries its best to shake-up the old-as-Philadelphia-Story comedy of remarriage and for the most part succeeds more than your traditional “Did You Hear You're My Pretend Boyfriend?” movies that arrive week in and week out at the theatre.
Text ©2010, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.
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Leaving all moral and existential judgments aside, I don't care how much of a weakness you have for unattainable or married individuals-- the last woman in the world that you should ever put the moves on is the wife of a diabolical dictator.
Yet, try telling that to Atonement star James McAvoy who makes like a Fiennes brother in the '90s and goes after not just another man's woman on film but General Idi Amin's largely shunned wife Kay (Kerry Washington).
Of course, one could argue that Amin has enough wives to make Bill Paxton on Big Love jealous. And despite the fact that this is somewhat rooted in the fact that McAvoy's character is a composite of two real life men including a local doctor who did seduce Kay, witnessing it onscreen seems ludicrous. For soon McAvoy goes from trusted confidant to acting like a shady double agent, complete with the makings of a revenge scenario that we also don't buy as the work charges towards its tense and brutally bloody finale.
The 2006 work has been rightfully praised for its audaciously charismatic portrayal of Amin by Forest Whitaker in his Oscar winning role which is elevated by his ability to go through the entire range of human emotion in a single scene.
Based on the novel by Giles Foden, the film derived its title from a question posed to Amin in a press conference is adapted by Jeremy Brock and Frost/Nixon, The Queen and The Damned United screenwriter Peter Morgan.
While the talented McAvoy seems a bit too young for his role, which nonetheless was written to be much younger than that of the character from the book, he's impressively able to play off of Whitaker even during the man's most horrifying extremes as he moves from playful laughter to out-of-left-field accusation.
Scotland's look indicates that it was purposely filmed like a docudrama which seems particularly fitting not just for the biopic format but because helmer Kevin Macdonald was previously best known as a documentarian.
And although the move to high definition retains all of the intended grain and '70s news footage style photography of the theatrical experience, the best improvement in the Blu-ray format is through it's more immersive DTS-HD Master Audio track which immediately calls you to attention and ensures you miss nary a nuance throughout the 123 minute running time.
And while it's easy to become caught up in the goings on, in spite of some of the plausibility elements that bog down the film, it's a bit unsatisfying to barely get our bearings in Uganda before McAvoy embarks on a rather rushed climb to becoming one of the most trusted members of the General's inner-circle.
The first film production made in the west since The African Queen to film in Uganda, overall The Last King of Scotland is highly compelling, volatile filmmaking bolstered twofold by Whitaker who commands a scene in what is arguably his most electric performance in his career thus far.
Text ©2010, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.
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