Movies
The Remains of the Day
According to my wife, “The Remains of the Day,”
starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson, is a movie
for women more than men because of its slow pace (2 hours
and 14 minutes), lack of action, and the theme of repressed
love. However, there also is a strong lesson in this movie
for everyone concerning the dangers of blind devotion
and false honor.
Oscar-winners Hopkins and Thompson reunite for this story
about an English butler named Mr. Stevens (Hopkins) in
the years before World War II and his high ideals about
what constitutes the perfect employee. While he serves
his master Lord Darlington (James Fox) with a great degree
of pride and acumen, keeping a fastidious mansion, he
chooses to ignore the events and discussions that take
place around him.
Darlington invites high-government officials from other
countries in Europe for a series of conferences in his
mansion about how Europe can avoid war, even as Germany
promises peace and the Nazi war machine grows. Darlington,
like many other members of the British aristocracy in
the 1930s, is duped by Hitler and the Nazis into acts
of appeasement and peace at all costs. Thompson stars
as the estate’s housekeeper, Miss Kenton, a strong-willed
woman who observes the events before her with trepidation.
Despite her apprehensions, she and Stevens fall in love,
though neither will admit it. Their relationship is played
out through arguments about the aforementioned issues
and how to run the household.
The story is told in a series of flashbacks as Stevens
rendezvous with Kenton in the late ‘50s, attempting
to make up for lost time, and marry her. But he is too
late, as Kenton chooses to remain with her husband, whom
she has been leaving off and on for years. During his
journey, he encounters different people who question his
relationship with Darlington, whom he often denies even
knowing.
In the end, he is still unable to acknowledge that he
should have done more to challenge his master’s
appeasement, maintaining that his honor and loyalty are
higher virtues.
Christopher Reeve also appears in the film as an American
senator who challenges the Nazi position during the series
of conferences at Darlington’s estate. He eventually
buys the mansion after Darlington’s death and retains
Stevens as butler.
It is easy to judge in hindsight that one would have been
more courageous, that one would have done the right thing
in the same situation. But that’s the point of the
movie that each viewer has to answer in his or her heart.
Would I have reacted differently?
- Reviewed by Philip
Anast |
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Stars Wars,
Episode III – Revenge of the Sith
Starring Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Hayden Christensen,
Ian McDiarmid, Samuel Jackson, Jimmy Smits and the voice
of Frank Oz; Directed by George Lucas
As a child in the late ‘70s, I was as stunned as
everyone else by the imagination and innovation of Star
Wars. So, I could not help loving this movie. In the final
(and out-of-sequence) installment of his sci-fi fantasy,
Lucas reminds us why his genius changed filmmaking –
and American pop culture – forever.
Yes. The script is a long way from Shakespeare. And yes.
Some of the actors – most notably Christensen, Portman
and Jackson – clearly struggled working among green
screens and digitally generated characters. But the dazzling
visual imagery seems to deepen with each viewing and compensate
for the predictable story line and wooden acting.
Other balancing pleasures are the performances of McGregor
and McDiarmid. The great Alec Guinness created the character
of Obi Wan Kenobi as an old rogue whose pride was chastened
by past mistakes. McGregor fully imagines how Guinness
would have played the young rogue, showing us the brash
foundation of an eventually wizened hero. My favorite
scene is when Obi Wan, with a shrug and wry smile, decides
to pre-empt his back-up troopers and take on a hangar
full of vicious battle droids by himself. Sure, he could
lose and die. But the prospect of winning is irresistibly
amusing to him.
McDiarmid’s obvious joy at playing the oily Chancellor
Palpatine who becomes the megalomaniacal Emperor is infectious.
My favorite lines come when he greets various Jedi before
battle, his voice dripping with mockery, menace and sheer
glee: “Maaaster Yoda! I’ve been waiting a
long time for this moment, my little green friend!”
Like the rest of us, he knows the Jedi are toast. And
McDiarmid’s performance seems to be winking at us,
saying the evil Palpatine knows it, too: “I have
foreseen it!”
One note of warning for kids: The story is about death
and killing – literally and figuratively. The sequence
when Darth Vader and the Emperor orchestrate the assassination
of all Jedi – including children – clearly
is a tribute to Francis Ford Coppola’s mob slaughters
in “The Godfather” series. Coppola is among
Lucas’ friends and mentors.
- Reviewed by Bob Dirkes |
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Big Fish
Starring Ewan McGregor, Albert Finney, Jessica Lange
Directed by Tim Burton
As my father has grown older, he has started to embellish
stories of his youth and it often is difficult to separate
fact from fiction. That’s the basic premise of Big
Fish, a wonderful movie by Director Tim Burton that chronicles
the life of Edward Bloom (played by Albert Finney as a
senior and Ewan McGregor as an adult). Bloom’s tall
tales begin with the story of an encounter with a giant,
a trek through a haunted forest, visit to an idealized
southern town and eventually Bloom’s courtship of
his wife, affectingly played by Jessica Lange. Because
it’s a Tim Burton movie, the visual effects are
first-rate and so are the cameos by Danny DeVito, Steve
Buscemi, Alison Lohman and Helena Bonham Carter. Although
Big Fish did not attract a basket full of Oscars, I believe
this movie will become a family classic much like the
Wizard of Oz and It’s a Wonderful Life.
- Reviewed by Mike Nikolich
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The Forgotten
Starring Julianne Moore, Dominic West, Anthony Edwards
and Gary Sinise
Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and in this movie
more desperate, when “The Forgotten” engrosses
you in a haunting thriller of sorts. Starring Julianne
Moore, it’s a freaky flick about a mom who loses
her young son in a plane crash and immediately starts
reaching – with a frantic combative drive –
to grasp anything which would re-connect her with the
boy’s memory. Anthony Edwards and Gary Sinise also
star as the husband and psychiatrist, respectively. They
furnish valiant help but not long into “The Forgotten,”
they begin feeling sorry for the main character and hint
to her that her son, well, never really existed.
Moore’s memory grows weaker by the scene. It’s
as though the loss of her son and her everyday behaviors
make those around her think she’s going off the
deep end. But soon she runs across a dad played by Dominic
West, who thinks he’s lost a child too. This time
it’s a daughter.
So the twosome hits the road searching for answers and
for their mysterious kids, an adventure ultimately taking
them to oddball locales including an airplane hanger.
By now the goings-on have the audience set on creep control.
Wearing a seat belt helps on bumpy plane rides and when
trying to stay put in your seat during spooky-surprise
movies like this one.
I for one rooted for Julianne and Dominic to locate the
son and daughter until most of the Joseph Rubin-directed
film was over. Part thriller but mostly a film which takes
you along for the descent into a psychological abyss,
“The Forgotten” has a story line that’s
a tiny bit absurd. Still, it’s worth a look, for
nothing more than Moore. She’s masterful whenever
she reveals just a little extra about her character with
each progressive scene.
Director Rubin and the talents of his leading lady combined
to give a nice pace to the movie with a hold-your-breath
climax. Are her grief and her determination to find answers
real, or is the whole pursuit merely a psychotic hallucination?
“The Forgotten” tests your own power to believe.
- Reviewed by Dave Reiners
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The Girl Next Door
Starring Elisha Cuthbert, Emile Hirsch
I really enjoyed this movie. Especially the first time
I saw it, when it was called “Risky Business.”
Yes, that’s right. An uptight high school super-achiever
male meets up with an unbelievably attractive female who
works in the sex industry, falls in love with her, and
the two of them redeem each either. In this case, the
female is a porn star rather than a hooker but other than
that the parallels are uncanny. He’s worried about
getting into a good school, she’s ready to leave
her past behind, and there’s even a Guido the Killer
Pimp in the form of a producer who views Cuthbert as his
meal ticket. And, of course, there’s the big finish
where his friends meet up with her friends and hilarity
ensues. Truthfully, it’s reasonably well done. But
you’ll definitely have the feeling you’ve
seen it before.
- Reviewed by Ken
Krause |
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Star Wars – Episode II,
Attack of the Clones
My disclaimer upfront is that I am not a Star Wars fan.
However, Star Wars fans will not be disappointed by Attack
of the Clones, Episode II in the trilogy. The story picks
up with Padme Amidala (Natalie Portman), now a senator,
resisting the creation of a Republic army to battle an
evil separatist movement. Viewers also see the continued
rebelliousness of Anakin Skywalker and his resentment
of the direction of Obi-Wan Kenobi, his Jedi master. Anakin’s
anger consumes him as exhibited by his total annihilation
of the Sand people after his mother dies in their custody.
The seeds are sown for his transformation to the dark
side and Darth Vader that will eventually take place in
Episode III. A steady fixture in all the Star Wars movies,
Jedi master Yoda saves the lives of Anakin and Obi-Wan
from the evil Count Dooku, who forges an alliance with
the Dark Lord of the Sith, a foreshadowing of events.
A forbidden love also develops between Padme and Anakin,
which will result in the births of two Jedi children,
Luke Skywalker and Princess Leah. In this film, one learns
of the origins of the storm troopers seen in the original
Star Wars movies. Episode II exemplifies the exquisite
filmmaking of George Lucas and portrays the historic developments
in filmmaking and technology now available versus what
Lucas had to work with in the original Star Wars movies.
In fact, the conundrum in the future will be whether to
watch the films in the sequence of their original releases
to the big screen, or chronologically.
- Reviewed
by Philip Anast |
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Gunner Palace
Produced, Written and Directed by Michael Tucker and
Petra Epperlein
This is filmmaker Michael Tucker’s cinematic masterpiece
of life with the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Field Artillery, a
U.S. Army combat unit that operated out of Uday Hussein’s
partially destroyed pleasure palace in Baghdad. Some of
this film has the surreal feel of Francis Ford Coppola’s
Apocalypse Now, such as when the unit is partying during
its fourth Gunnerpalooza in Uday’s ostentatious
pool to the tunes of My Girl as helicopters fly overhead.
The African American soldiers’ use of rap lyrics
throughout provides excellent vignettes that insightfully
tie together the ambiguity many of the soldiers felt about
their cause in Iraq. For the first time, it demonstrated
to me, as a middle-aged member of the establishment, how
influential and poetic rap has become to this generation
– similar to what Rock and Roll was to the youth
of the 1960s. Specialist Stuart Wilf, the 2/3rd FA’s
class clown, high school dropout, guitarist and irrepressible
Mark Twain wannabe, ties the narrative together with his
humor and surprising insights into War in the 21st Century.
He is counterbalanced by the quiet professionalism of
Sgt. Beattie, who keenly examines the impossible task
U.S. forces faced in trying to train Iraqi civil defense
forces. Unfortunately, two years later, many of the same
conundrums facing the soldiers of the 2/3rd seem to still
exist for the U.S. and our military today.
- Reviewed
by Tim Boivin |
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