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Anonymous (2011)
Highly Entertaining Film Will Introduce Edward de Vere to Millions
This is a beautifully written, acted, directed, and photographed film with a complex structure that is, nevertheless, easy to follow. The acting is uniformly brilliant, anchored by the astonishing performance of Rhys Ifans as Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. I was riveted from start to finish.
However, I see the Shakespeare-was-Shakespeare contingent of the reviewing press has the long knives out for this film and, not surprisingly, are not honest enough to admit that their real beef is the authorship angle.
The New York Times typist, for instance, says that the Oxfordian theory, "sometimes granted the unwarranted dignity of being called a theory, is hardly new." I say, okay Mr. Smartypants Stratfordian, since you feel there's scant evidence in favor of de Vere, let's review how ALL Shakespearean biographies are written, inasmuch as we know about ten solid facts about the fellow from Stratford (including: his entire family was illiterate, and the only writing in his home other than the Bible were some business receipts). The gullible or uninformed may not know this.
This is how they're written: The author begins with the assumption that the Stratford businessman wrote the works attributed to him and then reverse engineers a lengthy biography with (uniformly) such constructions as "Plays such as the Merchant of Venice are so replete with Venetian lore, geography, and local intrigue that it forces us to conclude that Shakespeare must have snuck off across the Alps during those fabled Lost Years." In other words, we don't know squat about him but since we assume he wrote the stuff we can postulate that he must have blahblahblahblahblah.
That's all they've got--reams of speculation for the faithful.
And yet, these preening literary flimflammers (and sycophantic academics seeking English department chairmanships) have the nerve to dismiss the far more coherent narrative that plausibly postulates de Vere as the author behind the works attributed to Shakespeare. The sonnets, in particular, closely correspond to de Vere's personal life in a way that cannot be easily dismissed.
Now, the film takes liberties with actual facts of the Oxfordian theory in order to make a compelling drama, but a sound case is made in many good books--one of the best being "Shakespeare by Another Name: The Life of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, the Man Who Was Shakespeare" by Mark Anderson; also, good resources can be found on the internet at the Shakespeare Oxford Society website. Nevertheless, it is a highly entertaining film that will introduce millions to de Vere and the very real possibility that, however reluctantly, he concealed his authorship of the celebrated works.
Battle: Los Angeles (2011)
U.S. Marines Vs Aliens -- Ooh-rah!!
I just saw BATTLE: LOS ANGELES, a Marines vs aliens combat movie that celebrates, in roughly this order, the Marines, American exceptionalism, and the notion that sometimes combat DOES solve things. It's INDEPENDENCE DAY meets BLACK HAWK DOWN without the campy ridiculousness of the former. Those are also the reasons it's getting tepid, even negative, reviews from a majority of critics (okay, I'll give them the tedious shaky camera gimmick that should have disappeared by now). The last thing the blame-America-first ideological pukes want is an American population that believes—seriously—there are military solutions to our problems. They don't want us to embrace that notion, whatever the cost, because they're busy negotiating away whatever national hegemony we have left.
This movie presents a plausible—yes, I said it: plausible—situation where the military might be the ONLY solution, what with the silly scientists sending signals and satellites into space shouting "Here we are! Here we are! Right here—come say hello!" If the recipients of those optimistic messages are not friendlies, we might just get to see this scenario up close and personal some day, and it won't be pretty.
BATTLE: LOS ANGELES follows a platoon of Marines on a search and rescue mission to evacuate whatever civilians are left in an area of Santa Monica, California that is under alien control before it is leveled by an air strike from our forces. Aaron Eckhart is just astonishingly good as the Staff Sergeant Michael Nantz and Michelle Rodriguez and the supporting cast matches him step by step. It is intense, close-quarters combat all the way and hardly gives you a second to catch your breath before it unleashes the next gripping set piece.
This movie has it all—action, heart, emotional conflict and a great acting. It's the best film of the year to date and you may not see a better one all year. Just don't expect INDEPENDENCE DAY because a real alien invasion will be ugly, like this one.
The Green Hornet (2011)
Kickass Without the Teen Angst
The reviewers were mixed in their reaction to this film, but the matinée audience I saw it with in downtown Hayward, California was less ambiguous, breaking out in belly laughs every minute or two. When leads Seth Rogan (Green Hornet) and Jay Chou (Kato) wreck their home fighting over a girl, audience members were busting a gut laughing. It's the most hilarious fight since The Three Stooges (and uses some of their moves).
About the only thing this send-up of masked crusaders lacks is a sufficiently goofy villain. Christoph Waltz gives it his best and has a great opening scene, but the part cries out for the over-the-top talents of Nick Cage, who turned the part down.
The action is staged well and overall it's a good time at the flicks. It's this year's "Kickass" without the downbeat teen angst.
Faster (2010)
Action Thriller Comes Screaming Out of the Gate
Dwayne Johnson's action thriller doesn't waste any time. It comes screaming out of the gate with rubber burning and guns blazing and does just about everything right. Besides the mayhem you paid your hard-earned dollars for, there's betrayal, vengeance, and even a bit of redemption woven in, just like the noir classics of old.
Now, you've probably seen some bad reviews (a certain San Francisco reviewer who gave it an "empty chair" comes to mind), but these are the same old hacks who ding flicks because, well, they aren't the movie they wanted the filmmakers to make, like The Piano, The Pianist, or some box-office bomb that features the Iraq war as its setting, or perhaps another pack of lies by America-hater Michael Moore. These poseurs would review a night of cage-fighting and complain that it wasn't the Orpheus String Ensemble.
Go. Enjoy. Obviously, they made it for just the sort of folks who like this kind of action entertainment, not the typists.
The Book of Eli (2010)
Engrossing and Moving
This is a story about a man's unshakable faith in the Holy Bible, his belief that it is the only hope to rebuild a decent society in a post-apocalyptic world, and the fulfillment of his thirty-year journey to take the only copy of the Bible to the west coast.
The cast is uniformly brilliant, the story is entirely engrossing, and the look of the film is striking. It's lensed as through we're seeing through the damaged retinas and partial cataracts of the survivors—everything's contrasty, bleached of color, and diffuse.
It's a terrific movie, but about half the reviews are sour, even hostile. I have to conclude that those who put their faith in man's rationality (despite a mountain of grisly evidence to the contrary) are put off by the spiritual theme. Too bad. If this country doesn't get its spiritual fiber cleaned and pressed soon, this hellish world will be our destination.
See it. It'll give you hope.
Avatar (2009)
Pretty Poop
A wag once said Hollywood gave GHANDI the Oscar because he represents everything Hollywood isn't--thin, tan, and moral. For AVATAR, we should add "indigenous" to that list. It takes the noble savage fantasy to ridiculous lengths and then, offensively, uses it to lash out at the War Against Islamic Jihad. The story looks as though someone threw up DANCES WITH WOLVES on THE LION KING at a Moveon rally.
English-speaking earthlings are the baddies here, bent on destroying the harmonious moon-loving hunter-gatherers in pursuit of filthy strip-mining lucre. Never mind Western culture invented most of the ideas about fair play and tolerance that are turned against us in moronic pulp diatribes such as this, or that industrial civilization feeds a crowded planet of 6,692,030,277. Lines such as "We'll fight terror with terror." and "Shock and awe" make it pretty clear that the real target of Mr. Cameron is America, its values, and its industry.
Mr. Cameron (who controlled every iota of what made it to the screen) may think the plight of his N'avi is comparable to that of Islamic terrorists but I don't recall the part where the N'avi come to earth and kill 3,000 of our people. Or the part where the N'avi capture innocents and saw their heads off on video with rusty knives. Or the N'avi law that stones a woman who is raped as an adulteress unless three men support her accusations. We're fighting benighted, medieval darkness here on earth, not enlightened nature lovers, and if Mr. Cameron chooses not to get it, I suggest he go to Afghanistan and experience their film-making first-hand.
This is $300 million of scurrilous 3D poop. Skip it.
Surrogates (2009)
Solid, entertaining cautionary thriller
SURROGATES.
When I see a movie this good that gets reviews this bad (37 percent here at RT), I ask myself, what crawled up their collective posteriors, besides trying to up their reps a notch? (As is so often the case, the NY Post's Kyle Smith is among those who get it right.) Well, in this movie I see several usual suspects.
Republican star Bruce Willis, for one. I'm sure they'd all like him to just go away and quit reminding us that sometimes a willful ballsy individual using brute force is, in fact, necessary to deal with recalcitrant baddies (as opposed to boring them to death in meetings). Or, maybe it's the conservative theme that there's more to life than settling into a warm, cozy cradle-to-grave bubble bath of safety, comfort, and recreation--courtesy of either the government or high-tech corporations. It's not the same as aliveness. That's not a message they want us to hear during the current push for the brave new socialistic America. Plus, they probably own a lot of tech stocks But my prime suspect (***SPOILER ALERT***) is the modest, sly observation that many of the radical loudmouths who provide the media's bread-and-butter sound bites--and further the lib causes for which the media shills--would not be there if they weren't backed and/or created by rich sponsors. It must have (censored) THEM OFF that Ving Rhames's wild-eyed Rasta revolutionary was a total phony, as are so many of his real-world counterparts.
Or, maybe they just couldn't take the hairpiece Willis's surrogate wears. Whatever. (You're not supposed to like it; they're plastic and they look it.) My opinion: it's a solid, cheesy little thriller with a cautionary point, a solid what's-going-on-here plot, and just enough character development to see it through. And, the ending set piece is a knockout. I chewed my fingernails almost to the quick.
Oh, and dear critics, if you think Willis could phone in this kind of performance, as so many of you said in as many words, or any screen performance, for that matter, try acting in a film. It's SO easy to suck and you probably will. Ask Rex Reed.
The Boys in the Band (1970)
Brilliant, Searing, Funny, and Still Relevant
Leonard Frey, who played Harold both in the celebrated off-Broadway production of BOYS IN THE BAND and in the film, told Johnny Carson a funny anecdote about his unforgettable entrance line during a particular performance of the play.
Michael has just flung the door open and, finding birthday boy Harold standing there giggling, scolds, "You're late. You're stoned and you're late." Harold brushes by him and delivers his famous line as he saunters directly downstage to the apron: "What I am, Michael, is a 32-year-old, ugly, pock-marked, Jew fairy, and if it takes me a little while to pull myself together, and if I smoke a little grass before I get up the nerve to show my face to the world, it's nobody's goddamned business but my own." He is then supposed to do a little Barbara Stanwyck pivot and sweetly ask: "And how are you this evening?" But before he can turn, a loud amen chorus comes out of the orchestra: "TELL IT LIKE IT IS, MARY!" Well, let there be general rejoicing throughout the land: BOYS IN THE BAND is still telling it like it is, and now in a stunningly beautiful DVD release. William Friedkin's landmark film is both brilliant film-making and a penetrating, bitingly funny examination of some of the more dysfunctional ways gay men cope with their pain. Mart Crowley, who adapted the screenplay from his play, penned more memorable lines than any three Bette Davis films. Director Friedkin gives Michael's tony, late-sixties Manhattan apartment a sense of place and mood that is just uncanny, and the ensemble acting is pitch-perfect. By the time LOOK OF LOVE plays, it's movie magic.
I remember seeing BOYS IN THE BAND as a college freshman in Oklahoma City during its initial release. I was not a little horrified by what I saw and prayed my generation would avoid this kind of self-annihilating behavior. And we did change some thingslaws, social structures, attitudes. But that said, in the thirty-five years that have passed between the making of BOYS IN THE BAND and Ang Lee's BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, emotional issues around gay sexuality have changed very little because the childhoods of most gay men changed only just a little. Then and now, gay boys early on pick up on dear old dad's apoplectic revulsion to their difference, and his subsequent withdrawal, however subtle, is deeply lacerating. Often it's not at all subtle. (Deep-closeted Alan's presence roils the party because he embodies such rejection.) For the most part, they still deal with the same emotional injuries as Michael from BOYS IN THE BAND or Ennis Del Mar from BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN. Anyone who says otherwise is either the happy exception that probes the rule or, more likely, someone hiding from his issues.
I could easily assemble the cast from my present circle of friends and acquaintances, including one whose rabbit-like frequency of couplings would make playboy Larry seem rather chaste by comparison (though, to be fair, Larry didn't have the advantage of having with him at all times a notebook PC with a browser open to men4sexnow dot com). My upper lip involuntarily curls with contempt at the self-deception of gay men who insist that we've come so far as to make BOYS IN THE BAND a tired irrelevancy. And, if written now, Crowley's witches brew would require just that sort of character--a sniffy, intellectually dishonest, college-educated militant who marches to a brittle little anthem inside his head and trowels PC banalities over his conflicts and longstanding hurts.
BOYS IN THE BAND is still as deeply relevant as it is funny and entertaining. We should take notice.
Delta Farce (2007)
Harmless, amusing diversion
This film rated only 3 percent at Rottentomatoes.com. That means it pleased only 3 percent of all the reviewers (critics would be a pretentious job description for most of these folks) who wrote it up.
If you read the reviewsa proposition far more tedious than the film they seem to hateyou'll see why there's nearly universal disdain for the flick: (1) a premise based on military reservists going to fight in Iraq (see Bush Derangement Syndrome), (2) jokes predicated on homosexual panic (the despised "homophobia"), and (3) "idiot racist humor," e.g., "I hear them carpet fliers don't wipe their butts."
Well! The establishment types cannot stand by and allow us to laugh at THOSE sorts of things, now, can they!? Especially not if they happen to be FUNNY. So they've sharpened their pens and let fly against what is basically a sweet, harmless, and amusing diversion. They said the same things (with a bit less vitriolafter all, the premise didn't arise from the hated Iraq campaign, did it?) about Larry the Cable Guy's last movie. So I rented the DVD and laughed my ass off. I mean, can you really not laugh at Larry's fart and plumber's crack jokes, or big ol' burly rednecks worrying about their masculinity? Of course not. FART JOKES ARE FUNNY!
Hey, you may not laugh as hard as you would at the hoidy-toidy pretentiousness of the mainstream media's narcissistic reviewers, but you'll laugh nonetheless.
Apocalypto (2006)
Jaguar Paw's Great Adventure
The reviewers are trying to damn this movie with an untruthful and insincere mantra about its alleged excess of violence: "brutally violent," "over-the-top violence," "unrelenting violence," "ultraviolent," "The Hills Have Eyes in the jungle," "unpleasant, pointless, gruesome, and exploitative," "pure, amoral sensationalism," "blood and gore
so extreme that they provoke titters of ridicule," "savage cruelty and sadistic barbarity," "lunatic violence," "feverish, mad violence." You'd think from the reviews that you were going to see two hours of babies being fed through a wood chipper. One went as far as to claim that it made the Saw movies seem like Little Women or some such nonsense.
It does no such thing. The Saw films were gratuitously and sadisticly violent; they set out to make audiences squirm and blanch at their sick, nihilistic machinations.
Apocalypto, on the other hand, is the typical, essentially optimistic Disney story of a happy Indian youth ripped savagely from his rainforest life by ruthless marauders, after which he has to escape and fight his way back to his land and people. That's it.
The violence arises from the fact that these particular marauders are bloodthirsty Mayan warriors harvesting neighboring tribes for their human sacrifices. Even then, much of the violence is Shakespearean and takes place just off-camera. For instance, you see women being carried off in the rape-and-pillage scene and you hear their cries but you don't see them being raped and murdered. Battles are staged much as they were in Braveheart. And yes, there's a beating heart lifted from a sacrificed man's chest by a blood-streaked Mayan shaman, but moviegoers saw the same thing in Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom; it got a PG rating and we read no critical hysterics about "lunatic violence." On the whole, you'll see as much blood and gore on the average CSI episode.
It probably should have been titled Jaguar Paw's Great Adventure. The glimpses Gibson provides of Mayan civilization are jaw-dropping. You won't ever see a more convincing cinematic evocation of another time and place in such scope and meticulous detail. Every face seems to have a complete history as Jaguar Paw is marched through the Mayan city. A well-to-do Mayan woman does nothing more than look at the prisoners from her doorway but the story her face tells is voluminous.
The last part of the movie is a rousing chase akin to The Naked Prey, and again, no more bloody and violent then the film it resembles.
Let's be plain here. What really has the critics'--especially those of the Eastern Elite variety--panties in a twist is the director, Mel Gibson. He said some things that upset them, plus (and most unforgivably) he's an outspoken and conservative Christian, so they're going to practice any sort of mendacity that will keep people from buying tickets to his film.
Don't buy the lies or you'll miss an amazing movie.
Casino Royale (2006)
Simply the best
I began this series with Goldfinger as a youth in Lubbock, Texas, and was knocked out. Before yesterday, I thought From Russia With Love was the truest to the Fleming novel of all the Bonds, with Dalton's Licence to Kill coming a close second.
Then I saw Casino Royale. This is the Bond that fans of the novels have waited for and it doesn't disappoint. It's truer to Ian Fleming's vision than any of the previous films: dark and violent, with richly detailed characters.
Sean Connery can exhale at last: the crown has found a new and worthy successor in Daniel Craig. He's at least as good as Connery and possibly better, inasmuch as his is a three-dimensional portrayal with no hint of smirky condescension to the role (which, generally speaking, broadened to the point of parody with Connery's successors--Timothy Dalton being the lone exception).
I take issue with those snobby reviewers who dismiss the plot as an excuse for the action set pieces; this time it's essential, and takes a clean, logical course from the first jaw-dropping chase to the tragic conclusion. The action is spectacular, but I was just as involved by the story.