Drama

Denzel Washington is one part prophet, one part assassin, one part messiah, and one part ordinary, flawed person in this ground-breaking post-apocalyptic movie.

Unlike the other post-apocalypse movie this year, The Road (the most depressing movie ever, beating out Angela’s Ashes for first spot), Eli is a story of hope and the enduring human spirit.  It is also a story of faith: unusual for Hollywood, the man of faith, the Bible and religion are portrayed positively in this film. Weird.

I cannot recall seeing a post-apocalypse movie that dealt with these topics in quite the same way.  If Mad Max, The Postman and Waterworld were good movies, with good stories and better acting, this one would still be better.

Finally a chance for Burt Reynolds to prove he is the great actor we all knew he could be!

Just star in a movie next to Ray Liotta and Jason Statham (who were amazing in Revolver), and make it a “knights of old” fantasy thriller, good versus evil sort of deal – NOTHING can go wrong.

Wow. WRONG!

This movie had every cliche of the “knights of the roundtable” genre. Honestly, I was waiting for juggling midgets to appear (almost surprisingly, they did not).

In case you care, here’s the gist of it: evil sorceror (Liotta) creates army out of mud people using magic, makes pact with evil nephew of King; orphan farmer’s kid gets killed and wife gets kidnapped by said army; farm boy (Statham, named “Farmer”, no less) wants to rescue his wife and runs into others in a similar pursuit, including the King’s army. [Breath] King (Reynolds) gets killed, but trusty and loyal advisor lets everyone know that Farmer was long lost son (don’t blame me for spoiling – you saw this coming); evil nephew gets his due; Liotta defeated; mud army goes home. Farmer becomes the new King and the world returns to good.

The hot forest women (think Poison Ivy from Batman times 10) made for an amazing and original plot element!

Not!

This movie was truly awful. Don’t waste your time or money.

And Jason and Ray – I’m very disappointed! Please don’t do this to me again!

The Queen (DVD)

“Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.”

This is really not a show about the Queen at all; in fact, a movie based on the short period surrounding Princess Diana’s death only portrays a small slice of the Queen’s life. As a staunch supporter of the English royalty, I was offended in the presumption of Hollywood to title such a moment with such an encompassing name.

Helen Mirren plays the queen with sensitivity and understanding, and just the right amount of nose pointing upwards.

The setting is England in 1997; the defining event is the death of Diana. Mr. Blair, played by Michael Sheen, is the new prime minister, an event that was already cause for change in England.

The conflict is the way details of Diana’s funeral are to take place. The Queen’s desire for a sober, private ceremony are not the wishes of the country, which naturally allows the media hype to dictate their emotional response.

While Mr. Blair comes off as some sort of demi-hero – he does take his turn at washing up the dinner dishes – he is also put smartly into his place at the end of the movie.

I hope the Queen does not think everyone hates her for being more upset over the death of a beautiful fourteen-point stag than she appears to be over the death of her grandson’s mother. She did mention the stoic British tradition of grieving silently to oneself, so who can say what feelings she was actually going through. And who can say the events did take place as the movie portrayed, poetic license and all that.

In the end, she did what was best for her people and for the monarchy.

In the end, she is the Queen.

Charlie Wilson’s War (Paperback)

OK, here’s a spoiler.

According to this movie, the collapse of the Soviet Union is due, almost singlehandedly, to the relentless efforts of one U.S. Congressman named Charlie Wilson.

In short, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was countered with some secret U.S. (and Saudi Arabian) spending on Russian-designed weapons bought from Egypt, then delivered by an Israeli arms dealer to the Pakistan government, who then disbursed these to the freedom fighters of Afghanistan to fight the Soviet invaders. And Rep. Wilson (D-Texas) made it all happen using some interesting channels and spheres of influence.

This is a fantastical interpretation of history that dares to suggest that politicians with a cause are truly able to achieve great things. It was a surprise, therefore, that it was not a preachy Hollywood film about some Democrat cause du jour. In fact, the Democrats and Republicans we meet are all likable in many ways, yet despicable in others. Julia Roberts even played a likable right-wing religious zealot. (A far cry from Marcia Gay Harden in The Mist.)

While these people are truly fun to watch on the big screen, none were people you’d want to hang out with on Friday nights. The exception, perhaps, is Amy Adams who plays a very pretty, smart, fun and thoroughly likable assistant to the hero. Her only apparent personality flaws were her utter devotion to Mr. Wilson, and an unlikely career in politics.

Tom Hanks plays our hero well, as one might expect, balancing the noble and not-so-noble sides of the character in a believable fashion.

The best scenes, however, were when the world’s greatest character actor himself (and the real star of the film), Philip Seymour Hoffman, graced the screen. He plays a cynical career spy who wants to do something useful, despite his superior’s efforts to sideline him. This movie is worth seeing for Hoffman’s scenes alone. Sheer cinematic brilliance.

The movie finishes with a scene where Rep. Wilson attempts to get a mere $1 million to fund building schools in Afghanistan and is turned down by every member of the committee that just funded the war effort to the tune of $500 million. It finishes with a quote from the real guy criticizing the U.S. for leaving Afghanistan without reconstruction help after they fought off the Soviets.

The message, essentially, is “don’t go support a war, then abandon all the people that were displaced by it.” Obviously this ties into the current situations in Afghanistan (and also Iraq), but didn’t strike me as particularly preachy, left-wing, right-wing, Democrat, Republican or otherwise. In fact, and here was an interesting dash of irony, they blamed the work that needed to be done as a result of the downfall of the Soviet Union (that came about ostensibly as a result of Rep. Wilson’s hard work), for declining any help for the people of Afghanistan. Go figure.

Anyway, go see this movie. Five stars!

Babel (DVD)

If true art portrays the culture that spawned it, Babel is art in its purest form. Perhaps that is why this film won an Oscar, plus 26 other awards from ALMA to Eddie to Best American Film, plus 72 additional nominations.The historical significance: human hands built the tower of Babel at a time when everyone spoke the same language. Mankind was attempting to build a tower to reach God. God struck the tower down, and when the people dispersed, they all spoke different languages.

Perhaps today’s shrinking world, the ease of travel to other countries, is the attempt to bring mankind to the lowest denominator, the striving for survival.

In Babel, four very diverse countries and cultures are involved. The convoluted story begins in Morocco with a family of goat herders, and their purchase of a rifle from a friend. The rifle’s purpose was to kill the jackals that were decimating the goatherd. But the boys were testing it out while watching the goats, to see if it would actually reach three kilometers as promised. The younger son, who was by nature a good shot, hit a bus that was approaching from some distance away. He thought he had missed, until the bus stopped not long after his shot. So the two boys ran back home, and later heard that an American tourist had been shot.

Meanwhile, the American tourist (Cate Blanchett) was there with her husband (Brad Pitt), who was trying to make amends for having left her and their two kids at some time in the recent past. She was not ready to acquiesce at that time. The tour bus got them to a small town where she was patched up. Her husband contacted the embassy for assistance.

While all this was going on, the children’s nanny, an illegal from Mexico, decided to take the two small children with her to her sister’s wedding in Mexico. She had tried unsuccessfully to get someone to watch them for the day. During the course of events, Amelia and the two children are dropped in the dessert on the American side of the border after the wedding.

Where do the Japanese father and his daughter fit into the picture? Besides providing the nude scenes, it turns out that the father had given the rifle to his hunting guide in Morocco as a thank-you for the trip. The daughter is deaf, and adjusting to the loss of her mother. The teenage form of the angst all humanity goes through. Her misguided attempts to lose her virginity are deep cries for comfort.

Babel literally means confusion. And this movie is definitely about the confused states of the people involved. Awareness comes slowly, and to some it doesn’t come at all.

Proof (DVD)

With shades of “A Beautiful Mind”, Proof holds interest as the love affair/mathematics proof trundles on its treacherous path.

Gwyneth Paltrow is convincing in her role as the daughter of a brilliant mathematician who suffered from schizophrenia in his later years. After his death, there are questions regarding the authorship of a proof Catherine (Paltrow) presented to Hal (Jake Gyllenhaal), a teacher who was once her father’s pupil, as their romance blossomed. Combine this with a controlling sister ready to script Catherine’s life, and you have an emotionally charged, challenging story.

The brilliant script combined with the convincing acting make this a memorable movie with emotional impact. The only flaw is the lack of mathematical content – we do not know how Robert’s original proof impacted the world, only that it did. And we don’t have a clue as to what the later proof might purport, or why it would be significant. Even if we, the audience, have a limited understanding of mathematics, it would have grounded the story better if a premise and conclusion were included.