The King's Speech Has a Royally Good Script

The King’s Speech

Directed by Tom Hooper

118 minutes, Rated R (lest some one somewhere has never heard a swear)

* * * *

The King’s Speech is a rhetorical pas de deux between Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush that restores one’s faith in what can happen when you put a strong script in front of two superb actors. Can you imagine? Two hours and nothing blows up, nobody drops trou, and there are no action figures to save half the world by slaughtering the other half. It’s amazing that this film plays at the local mall!

Colin Firth plays England’s Duke of York, the man who never really wanted to be a monarch, but was forced to become King George VI when his brother David (Edward VIII) took up with the twice-divorced Wallis Simpson and was forced to abdicate. (British law forbids a monarch to marry a divorced person if the ex-spouse is still alive.) Poor Prince Albert (“Bertie”) wasn’t even comfortable being a duke because it demanded public appearances and he stuttered like a woodpecker snacking on an insect-laden log. He’s tried everything to tame a stammer made even worse by the unspeakably awful family he was born into. Were it not for his kind wife, Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter), he’d have given up trying long ago. When all else fails, Elizabeth steers him to the shabby basement office/home of Lionel Logue (Rush), a failed Australian actor living in London and (barely) eking out a living giving elocution lessons and treating vocal impairments.

It’s a story of how Bertie and Lionel connect, despite considerable odds and seemingly insurmountable social barriers. This film is being touted as an Oscar favorite and its already gotten won awards and seven Golden Globe nominations. This is due more to the disappointing quality of the competition than the strength of this one. This is a very enjoyable film, but it’s no masterpiece. It is a testament to David Seidler’s screenplay that we care at all. On the face of it, nothing really happens in the film. It’s one big strip tease as to whether or not Bertie can make a 1939 radio speech committing England to war against Germany. That’s pretty thin stuff, and of course he does or there’s no bloody movie. (In truth, Bertie had worked with Logue for twelve years by then and had grown more comfortable with public speaking.)

It’s the witty and wicked exchange between Firth and Rush that make this film worth viewing. The two are delightful together, especially in moments in which Firth seeks to maintain royal composure and Rush seeks to annihilate it. Firth is a strong candidate to win the Best Actor Oscar this year. That would not be a travesty, though he should have gotten the statue last year for A Single Man, a superior film and performance. For my money, though, I can’t imagine a better Supporting Actor role than Rush as Lionel Logue. See this film. Don’t expect gold, but it does pack the delight of hitting the jackpot on the quarter slots.

A big “Booo! Hiss!” to the idiots who rated this film R. Did it get that rating because some fire-breathing fundamentalist objected to the word “shit?” If you need more evidence on the irrelevancy of MPAA ratings, this is it.

Lars Predicts that Predictions are Predictably Wrong

Larstradamus thinks crystal balls should be used for duck pin bowling.

Every winter about this time we’re flooded with predictions for the new year. I’m often approached by the various publications for which I write to make a few of my own. Most of the time I respectfully decline. In my other job as an historian I’ve enough trouble figuring what already happened, let alone what will occur down the road. I can, however, tell you that history reveals that there are precious few Nostradamuses (Nostradami?) out there. In fact, Nostradamus was no Nostradamus; he was just an old codger living in the 16^th century and eking out a living as a druggist. He made a series of prophecies that were roughly as specific as the daily horoscope, which is to say you can twist them any way you wish.

I’ve read the latest prognostication that the world is about to end, either in May of 2011 when the Rapture occurs, or early in 2012 when the Mayan calendar runs out. Okay, so here’s my prediction: neither will occur. If they do, sue me. There are only three guaranteed predictions. The first is that in any given calendar year a bunch of people will be born and a bunch will die. Second, fewer famous people will die than non-famous ones, but there will be more good people among the non-celebrated departed. Third, most predictions made for 2011 will prove wrong to the point of stupid. The one or two who guessed right will go on cable TV and set up a 900 number, but they’re not seers; they were just lucky (and selectively crafty in hiding what they got wrong.)

2011 has already featured tons of political and economic forecasts. Pay no attention to any of them unless you just want a belly laugh. Obama has no chance of winning reelection in 2012, right? Sure--that’s what they said about Bill Clinton in 1995, just before he beat old Bob Dole like a hyperactive child with an empty oatmeal tub. Twenty months in political time in an eternity. And for heaven’s sake ignore all economic forecasts as if they were Biblical-proportion plagues of grasshoppers. You could take every economist from the past twenty years who accurately forecast the state of American finance, stuff them in your penny jar, and still have room for coins.

Take it from old Larstradamus, who predicts that the hot fashion item for 2012 will be egg applied liberally onto the faces of those who predicted what 2011 would bring.

Best Films of 2010 (No Matter What Oscar Says)

Hollywood won't honor this film, but you should!

The Oscar nominations will be out soon. Ho hum. Chances are you won’t have seen several of the films nominated for Best Picture. That’s because they only need to have been released in New York or Los Angeles within the calendar year to be nominated and won’t actually make it to your town until some time this spring. Keep this in mind as you look over this list of Best Films for 2010--some of these are movies considered 2009 releases, but we count them as 2010 entries because we happen to live in the parts of America that lie between Tribeca and Sunset Strip. Those in blue link to a longer review.

1. Winter’s Bone. Will not win any Oscars--it has no stars, was made on a shoestring, and is deeply disturbing. It’s also head and shoulders above anything coming out of Hollywood in ’10.

2. White Ribbon--This take on hysteria in one German village during early-twentieth-century is a searing portrait of what made Nazism possible. Utterly brilliant and I offer no rebuttal to anyone who ranks it as number one.

3. A Single Man--Colin Firth got jobbed for not winning Best Actor last year for his portrayal of a gay professor whose lover’s death plunges him into reckless despair.

4. The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus--Terry Gilliam’s latest is a surrealistic update of the classic tale of bargaining with Satan to gain immortality. Heath Ledger’s last film is equal parts wacky and creepy.

5. MicMacs--Jean-Pierre Jeunet (“Amelie”) matches Gilliam in humor and surrealistic weirdness. What if we collected life’s lovable outcasts, orchestrated them, and let them take revenge on their tormentors?

6. Logorama--Winner of last year’s Short Animation Oscar, this 16-minute film is among the most subversive you’re likely to view. A witty and devastating look at a dystopian future in which America has become so thoroughly corporatized that its logos come to life.

7. The Social Network--This (barely) fictionalized look at Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg is almost as creepy as The Silence of the Lambs and you may come to see Hannibal Lecter as more honest!

8. The Grocer’s Son--A sweet French film that was made in 2007 but didn’t find its way here until last year. A young man discovers his humanity amidst a cast of rural eccentrics, lonely hearts, and elders.

9. The King’s Speech--Colin Firth may collect the Oscar this year for his portrayal of the stammering and never-wanted-to-be-a-King George VI. Geoffrey Rush steals the show, though.

10. Fair Game--Need another reason to despise George Bush? Check out this dramatization of the outing of spy Valerie Plame, the victim of a Bush vendetta against her husband.

Worst Films Viewed in 2010

Winner of the not-so-coveted Worst of the Worst Award!

Everyone has a “Best of” list and so will we later, but let’s ring in the new decade properly with a list of films to avoid for 2011. If you have any of these in your Netflix cue, delete them immediately.

Rule one for bad cinema is that the film doesn’t have to have been made in 2010, merely viewed in that year. Rule two is that big-budget disappointments stink worse than independent ineptitudes, so some of these fall into the “big-hype-little-pay off” category. Rule three is that we can revise initial ratings. Some films just seem worse the more one contemplates them.

The films that show up with links will take you to a full-length review, just in case you want more turkey feathers strewn across your screens. Lars’ top ten turkeys are, from awful to merely horrible are:

1. Shaun of the Dead--a film about zombies that was apparently also acted, written, and directed by zombies.

2. Vincere--Some art house geeks loved this film, but Mussolini as Don Juan? Are you frickin’ kidding me?

3. Broken Embraces--Another pretentious stinker from Almodóvar, who hasn’t had anything to say in years yet continues to say it.

4. Avatar--All that money for plagiarism bathed in blue?

5. Black Swan--Showgirls in tutus.

6. Chloe--The entire film is simply a voyeuristic excuse to see Julianne Moore roll about naked with Amanda Seyfried. Okay--but a script would have been nice.

7. The Girl Who Played with Fire--The middle part of the trilogy and it feels like what it is: a heavy link between parts one and two.

8. The Fantastic Mr. Fox--A highly hyped piece of neo-con family values hogwash masquerading as clever animation (which it isn’t).

9. Nowhere Boy--I’m surprised that John Lennon hasn’t risen from the grave to repudiate this revisionist whitewash of his boyhood.

10. Harper--That rarest of things--a bad Paul Newman film. This 1966 Newman- as-hardboiled-PI aged more like American cheese than gruyere.

Black Swan Less than Half Cooked

Black Swan

Directed by Darren Aronofsky

108 mins. Rated R (Sexual situations, language)

* *

They hype has been enormous. Black Swan hadn’t even opened before Natalie Portman was said to be a wrap for an academy award. Now that it’s here, Ms. Portman may want to wait before she buys a gown for Oscar night. I hate to say it, but a whole lot of Black Swan plays like Showgirls in tutus.

Think that’s harsh? The stories are nearly identical. First, replace Vegas with the New York City Ballet. In Black Swan we have aspirant prima donna Nina Sayres (Portman). She’s basically a good girl, but she’s ambitious and everyone around her tells her she needs to be more aggressive to get to the top. That list includes her mother, Erica (Barbara Hershey), who stood where Nina now stands and had to give up her career when she got pregnant with Nina. Also high on the list is maniacal choreographer Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel), who is equal parts brilliant and smarmy--the sort who wants both to produce groundbreaking ballet and get into the Danskins of his principal stars. Leroy’s bold idea is to produce the classic Swan Lake in such a way that the same dancer is both the white (good) swan and the black (evil and destructive). The perfectionist Nina is ideal as the white swan, but can she summon enough misanthropy to dance the black? Also standing in her way is Lily (Mila Kunis), her understudy, and Beth MacIntryre (Winona Ryder), the washed-up queen whom Nina seeks to supplant and whom Leroy has already cast aside.

A familiar story indeed…. It’s 42^nd Street, which was the basis for Showgirls. Nina’s a bit classier than Elizabeth Barkley in Showgirls, but she’s every bit as naïve about what it takes to get to the top. She’s been a pampered princess, fiercely protected (and driven) by her single mother and kept pristine and virginal behind a frilly pink wall of stuffed animals. (Barkley had abusive parents.) So, of course we know what will happen next--Nina’s bubble will burst when she’s pushed to go beyond her expectations. Nina is on course, but others have been her GPS and she has no idea what direction to go when she’s forced to take a detour. How bad does she have to be? With whom must she sleep? Whom must she destroy? Whom can she trust? Yep--just like Showgirls. The only major difference is that, at its core, Black Swan is a tale of Nina’s unraveling rather than her arrival.

With better direction this might have played better, but Aronofsky is so ham-handed that Nina’s descent is telegraphed and plays more like a grade-B horror film than a classy drama. And it really does look a lot like Showgirls, with Cassel standing in for Kyle MacLachlan and Kunis for Gina Gershorn. There’s even a gratuitous lesbian sequence between Portman and Kunis that would have been way more appropriate for Showgirls than for Black Swan. Okay, so Portman is a way better actress than Barkley (who isn’t?) and I’ll concede that the film looks gorgeous and is well acted, though if anyone should win an acting Oscar it should be Cassel, not Portman. In the end, though, Black Swan no amount of high-falootin’ ballet and longhair music can’t disguise the fact that it really is Showgirls with less nudity and crudity--it’s histrionic, campy, and trashy.

PS--It’s not a “chick flick” either; most of the women I know who’ve seen this film agree that it’s not exactly Swan Lake.

Celtic Extravaganzas a Mixed Bag

Welcome to the post-Riverdance Celtic world. Riverdance has toured the world, done a stint at Radio City Music Hall, and its rebroadcasts have been a staple for PBS fundraisers for over a decade. It’s done more to revitalize interest in music from the Celtic lands than anything since the 1961 debut of the Clancy Brothers on the Ed Sullivan Show. Riverdance has also spawned a cottage industry of smug critics, their complaints over the show’s more garish moments fueled in no small part by lead step dancer Michael Flatley’s flamboyant--some would say egotistical--personality. Riverdance begat Lord of the Dance, Feet of Flames, and Celtic Tiger. Those who like these shows use adjectives such as “theatrical” and “sensational” as compliments; those who don’t use the same terms pejoratively.

I have come neither to praise nor bury Riverdance, rather to offer a few thoughts on a recent viewing of another Irish-themed stage show, A Christmas Celtic Sojourn. In my view, all of the so-called “Celtic” stage shows have similar virtues and demerits. Let’s start with this: the purists don’t have a leg to dance on when they slam such shows an “inauthentic.” Celtic music, as scholar June Skinner Sawyers wisely observed, is at core a “marketing term” that has little connection to music’s origins. Very, very little of what is called “traditional” music actually is, and most of what we think of as “Irish” or “Scottish” music is a post-1970s reinterpretation of songs and tunes that were canonized during the nineteenth-century after the Victorians cleaned them up. And, as every musician and fan of music knows, traditions that don’t change wither and die. So let’s just judge these things on their own merit, not some romantic (and mythical) standard.

I caught A Christmas Celtic Sojourn in Northampton, MA at a nearly full Calvin Theatre on December 12. This show is the brainchild of Cork-born Brian O’Donovan, now a mainstay of WGBH (public) radio in Boston. O’Donovan emceed a show that was one-part Riverdance and several parts A Prairie Home Companion--a sprawling night of music, dance, and storytelling loosely structured around Yule themes. O’Donovan is witty and charming--think Garrison Keillor with a brogue. Throughout the evening he acted as the interlude between musical numbers as he read poems and told stories. His Irish fruitcake tale was a delight that found the seam between a cultural education and a shaggy dog tale.

Like Riverdance, Sojourn also featured lots of step dancing. The principle dancer, Donegal-based Caitlín Nic Gabhann, is a veteran of Riverdance, which means there is actually some upper body movement. She has clearly mastered all of the technical aspects of step dancing, but her gestures and arm movements are classically post-Riverdance in that they are informed as much by modern dance as Dublin’s misty past. As good as Nic Gabhann is, she was upstaged by the pint-sized Harney Academy of Irish Dancing troupe of Walpole, MA. These kids--including an Asian-American lad who’s as short as a New York minute--are so good it’s scary. Their precision is such that they conjure visions of vaudeville stage parents pushing them to precocious heights. Crowd pleasures for sure!

The music itself was decidedly mixed. Seamus Egan of Solas served as musical director, but the evening’s low lights were none of his doing. There were some fabulous performances, and how could it be otherwise with fourteen of Celtic music’s brightest and best on stage? The set done by Orkney fiddler Chris Stout and harper Catrionia McKay (from Dundee, Scotland) was nothing short of brilliant--edgy, experimental, dynamic, and wistful one moment, and shot through with energy the next. Many of the group tunes were wonderful, especially when Stout’s bowing was supplemented by the other fiddlers on stage: Hanneke Cassel and Amanda Cavanaugh. Toss in McKay, nonpareil cellist Natalie Haas, squeeze box artist Seán Óg Graham, bass player Chico Huff, and percussionist Eamon Murray and they can light up even a big barn like the Calvin.

The low spots? They occurred mostly when the forced Yule theme emerged. I love Celtic music (whatever it might be) but I’m just bored, bored, bored with Christmas carols and I doubt many of us paid to hear “Joy to the World” and “Oh, Holy Night.” Heck, we’ve been hearing those at the mall since mid-October. I also confess that I am not a fan of Heidi Talbot, the Irish-born lass who crooned most of the carols. Many people think she has a lovely voice, which I’d not dispute, but her whispery little-girl intonation wears thin, which is also an adjective I’d use to describe tones that are mostly upper-range and have little bottom or grit. The vocal star of the evening was actually Robbie O’Connell, a graying vet who was in fabulous voice. His rendition of John McCutcheon’s “Christmas in the Trenches” was a poignant moment. It also served to remind that Celtic extravaganzas generally work best when they do the unexpected. A Christmas Celtic Sojourn is now in its eighth year and one hopes that as it evolves that it will choose to accentuate what is unique and leave the canned seasonal jollity in the mall.

Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest Lacks Sting

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's [sic] Nest

Directed by Daniel Alfredson

Swedish, 147 mins. Rated R (for scattered unpleasant references, violence)

* * 1/2

Novelist Stieg Larsson left behind most of a fourth “Girl Who” sequel when he died in 2004, and plot synopses for a fifth and sixth book. But, if parts two and three of the film adaptations of Larsson’s books are any indication, this may not be a good thing. Although Larsson was, at his death, the world’s second biggest-selling author, it appears to me that the franchise has pretty much played out the string. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest has only made about $4.4 million in its U.S. release thus far and it’s hard to envision it earning much more--it’s simply a so-so movie that deserves its so-so response.

At the end of part two--and don’t even dream of seeing this one unless you catch parts one and two on video--our anti-heroine Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) was being flown in for emergency surgery--covered in filth and gore and with a bullet lodged in her brain. Well, of course, she survives or there is no part three! The title of the third installment is, however, curious. Lisbeth doesn’t do much kicking because she’s in a hospital room or a prison cell for nearly the entire movie. Part three really centers on crusading journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) and his obsession with clearing Lisbeth from the attempted murder charges that hang over her. Opposing his efforts is a secret rogue security force determined to keep a dirty Swedish government secret, even if it means either killing Lisbeth, or putting her back in the nuthouse forever. There are several other baddies floating about, including a neo-Nazi motorcycle gang, Lisbeth’s father, and her half brother, the monstrous Ronald Niedermann (Micke Spreitz).

The plot is thin and largely revolves around whether Blomkvist will release a Millenimum Magazine exposé before the good guys get killed. This segues to a rather standard courtroom drama, complete with the sort of last-minute revelations you’ve come to expect in such movies. Only toward the end of the film do we get action sequences in keeping with the first two films and even here Rapace lacks the fire she’s previously exuded. She plays the part of a woman who is defiant, but definitely worn down by her various ordeals. She plays the part well, but a vulnerable Lisbeth simply isn’t as enticing as what we’ve come to expect. Put it this way--there’s a world of difference between watching the diminutive Lisbeth kick a motorcyclist’s butt and waiting to see if she’ll ever use the phrase “thank you.”

Director Alfredson dropped the ball on several subplot themes that could have beefed up the thin script, including a deeper probing of the affair between Blomkvist and publisher Erika Berger, and more background on the motives of Lisbeth’s psychological tormentor, Dr. Peter Teleborian. And Spreitz was completely wasted in this film, wandering around more like Lurch gone bad than as a fully developed character.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest isn’t a bad film, merely a pedestrian one. Completists will wish to see it, but don’t be surprised if you feel more anti-climax than resolution. After seeing all three I can say that I was thrilled by the first film and diverted by the second and third, but it’s time to put this series to rest. In my view, Hollywood is making a mistake by recasting it and launching an Americanized version of the franchise. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest is a classic metaphor for a concept that’s lost its sting.--LV