Young Victoria

Deb 8 Me 7

I didn't go in kicking and screaming, but English Royalty isn't a subject I'm particularly interested in. They just seem like pompous spoiled creatures who have inherited the earth while wearing funny clothes. However, we went to see The Queen a few years ago (which was about the current batch of sovereigns) and it was pretty good. Plus, the Kinks did a rockin' little number called Victoria. So in we go.

I'm always reluctant to see movies where they wear costumes. I know, they're all costumes. I mean clothes from another place or period of time. It's hard for me to relate to anything that predates Levis. I mean, if they're wearing robes and wigs to breakfast, how am I supposed to relate to their world? That's the job of a good director, to take these obstacles and turn them into tools to help you identify with the characters. So congrats to Jean-Marc Vallee for clearly defining each of the roles and making the qualities and concerns of the players contemporary enough that I could relate to them.

I don't know how accurate the movie was to real life. There are dates and places indicated, which used to mean "this really happened", but Oliver Stone destroyed dates and places as a credible reference. So if it's all real, if it's all fantasy or any blend of the two; it's well done.

The film wisely limits itself to a small period of time and a small troup of easy to follow subjects; and for the most part uses easy to understand contemporary language with only a smattering of period lingo to add to authenticity.

Everybody seemed to do a good job. It was a good looking movie, engaging and easy to follow. There were only one or two unanswered questions at the end, but not enough to distract you from the overall quality of the movie. And speaking of the end, there are more endings than Apocalypse Now. Weird, but just a choice by the director, no demerits given for that.

I don't know if we've just been lucky lately or if my getting old has changed my taste, but I've been giving out a lot of high points this year. I gave this thing 7 points and could have easily gone to 8 like Deb did. Despite my reluctance to see it, I was won over by it's well told story.

The Last Station

Deb 7 Me 8

It seems like most biopics focus on people that are incredibly destructive or self-destructive. This movie is about Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, Leo for short, who wrote a couple famous books, Anna Karenina and War and Peace. No small feat, but his The Kingdom of God is Within You, started an entire movement of passive resistance that got the Gandhi ball rolling. Leo was a much better balanced guy than most of these fictionalized biographies feature, but his world was filled with conflicts and contradictions.

That seems to be what the film is about. It’s fun to see what movies are about. Sometimes you think it’s one thing and then it turns out to be another. Sometimes it’s hard to pry your pre-conceived notions out of your head and sometimes you were right in the first place.

Watching this movie was just a pleasure to sit back and see where it takes you. I didn’t have any real references to Tolstoy and didn’t know where it was going at any particular time. Sometimes you know just a little about the subject and you’re waiting the whole time, “this is where he gets hit by lightning or where the whale gobbles him up”. No such expectations here and the filmmaker guides you through the chronology seamlessly.

It’s a smart film and cast well. Christopher Plummer, a famous name, played Leo. He must do a lot of theater because the good movies he’s been in you can count on your hand. Helen Mirren played the wife and she was pretty great, another theater person I guess. You have to have young people in there too so they got James MacAvoy and some other young thing as his love interest. MacAvoy does a good job, maybe overplays his zeal a few times, but I’m constantly distracted by his remarkable similarity to an old friend, Broc Smith. I keep thinking, “that’s not what Broc would do…” (obviously my own problem and not that of the actor). If I have any criticism it might be that most of the people are from theater where exaggeration is a necessary part of getting your point across, film rewards subtlety.

It was a pretty straightforward film, and I enjoyed sitting there for it’s just under two hour running time. The credits were cool too; they rolled archival film of the old man that was interesting to see. I don’t know if it’s accurate to any degree, but it’s enjoyable.

A Single Man

Deb 7 Me 8

This was a great romantic tale of dealing with love lost. It was a very traditional story told well. It is an absolutely beautiful film to watch. Almost every scene is filled with good-looking people lit in stirring ways set in perfect period sets. The biggest twist is that all the romantic interests are dudes.

The film is based on a book by Chris Isherwood. He wrote I Am A Camera and Cabaret. He was also the subject of the movie Chris and Don, about Isherwood picking up on a young male artist, Don Bachardy, and having a life long love. Deb and I know Bachardy’s artwork and even have mutual friends. Don was creative consultant on this film directed by fashion guru Tom Ford, his first film. (Thank you Scott Faris for teaching me to read the credits when we were kids.)

Yes there are some problems with the film. It was set during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 yet there was a 1963 ‘Vette in a parking lot. There were some people introduced for no apparent reason, there were some scenes that weren’t connected to anything other than they were beautifully shot.

One of the measures of a good movie is that they can rise above any perceived flaws and you concentrate on the story. I thought it was a good story, told well. There was tension and release, humor and drama, it’s got it all. There is a lot of romance. The scenes of budding love, of wooing a suitor are all effective. There’s the twist of them all being guys that may make people feel edgy, and that’s a fine result of good film making.

On my score sheet the flaws were overridden by the well told story. Deb had a tougher time letting the holes go and gave it a lower score. We both were struck by how pretty the movie is, and that was even a bit distracting for Deb.

Fences

Deb 4 Me 4

This is a little out of the ordinary but we went to see a play instead of a movie so here goes a theater review.

Fences is a 1987 Pulitzer Prize winning play written by August Wilson. He has written a bunch of stuff and got a whole bunch of awards, all of which have escaped my attention over the years. We saw the production on the Segerstrom Stage of the South Coast Repertory. These theaters are cool. You’re in kiddie chairs stacked up against the stage where the actors can actually spit on you in the good seats. This was a one-set play in two one hour acts with a fifteen-minute intermission. The set was a really nice Norman Rockwell slum, apparently set in Pittsburg, but could have been any most anywhere.

The first act was not much to write about. The main guy was played by Charlie Robinson who played Mac on the TV show Night Court. He is very good. But basically all the players were like caricatures. They were all exaggerated folks who had stereotype written all over them. All the people in the play are black and they all played up that step-and-fetch-it kind of black. It seemed a bit derogatory.

Race relations have been pissing me off more and more lately. When was it, 1865 that the black slaves were freed? Then it took another hundred years before blacks could legally use the same restaurants, hotels, public transportation, even bathrooms as the white folks. After a hundred years of being freed they still couldn’t go to the schools of their choice or even vote. So white America has been pretty successful at not bringing the black community up to white community standards. And there doesn’t seem to be any push to do so. And the black population doesn’t seem to be in any hurry either. Maybe they’re just too beat up after so many generations of being spit on. But I don’t like it. I don’t like that most blacks live in horrible ghettos with little hope of getting out and no one is making room for them if they wanted to. Sure there are more exceptions today than there have ever been, but they are still exceptions.

So this play is written about a poor black neighborhood with poor black attitudes and limitations all interpreted by a white writer. I’m sure he’s sympathetic to their plight, but it all just seemed wrong to me. After a hundred and fifty years of keeping freed blacks “in their place”, this play did nothing to help them change. It obviously wasn’t the author’s goal, but it seemed like another Pulitzer opportunity missed.

Intermission was good. Then we went back in for the second act and it featured the wife, Rose, played by Juanita Jennings. She was the first real engaging part of the play. Everything she said made sense and fit in the story. The play continued for a while, feeding off her energy and then got lost again.

What I mean by lost is that there were a lot of story points that just seemed inconsequential. They spent a lot of time developing points that was never fully addressed or resolved. The play was filled with metaphors that were either contradictory or forgotten by the end of the play. It seemed like Wilson’s story was just edited very heavily for time and there was a lot of key points left on the editing floor. Too bad.

I like plays and just putting one on gets it some points. Deb liked it a lot more than I did although it’s not really reflected in the point spread.

If you don’t go, stay home and watch the Great Santini. It is pretty much the same story. The vehicles used are different, Santini was a white warrior bitter at having no war; Fences was a black man bitter about missing his lot in life. Santini is just a lot more engaging for me.