"Marie Antionette"
Richard's Review: 3 1/2 stars
Like the misunderstood queen the movie is based on, Marie Antoinette, the movie, has gotten a bad rap. It was met with boos at the Cannes Film Festival, blasted by critics and historians for not being an exacting look at the life of the teenaged queen. It may not get the details 100 per cent right, but if you want accuracy watch the History Channel. Sophia Coppola's follow-up to the wildly popular "Lost in Translation" is more of a tone poem, a dreamy biography more concerned with feelings than facts.
As with her two previous films, "The Virgin Suicides" and "Lost in Translation," Coppola once again shows her skill in capturing the youthful perspective of odd circumstances. Just as the Lisbon sisters of Suicides felt alienated by their suburban surroundings and family, and "Lost in Translation's" Scarlette Johansson suffered the isolation of an unhappy marriage and strange country, the youthful queen of Marie Antoinette must deal with isolation and rejection, Versailles style.
Brought from her native Austria at age 14 as kind of a "womb for hire" Marie Antoinette (Kirsten Dunst) was thrust into a loveless marriage with Louis XVI, the boy king who had no interest in her, and the court of Versailles, a gossipy and cruel place so vicious they make the London tabloid press look like Miss Manners. As Antoinette attempts to acclimate herself to life in the court she embraces the decadence, spending lavishly while her subjects starved. Even her hair reflects her excess. As the film goes on her hair grows from a subdued hairdo to an outrageous bouffant that would make even Kim Jong Il green with envy.
Coppola's film is luscious. Shot on the world's most expensive film set -- she was the first director given permission to shoot at Versailles -- the movie is uncommonly beautiful. More controversially she chose British pop music as the key songs on the soundtrack. Now this is no "A Knight's Tale," a medieval tale where the new wave music seemed out of place and strange. Coppola's use of New Order and The Cure fit the mood of the piece perfectly. In one stunning scene Marie Antoinette is doing some at-home shopping -- merchants would bring their most beautiful and expensive baubles to Versailles for her perusal -- and as the camera glides over the pink and blue shoes, Bow Wow Wow's "I Want Candy" pulsates on the soundtrack. Music and scene mesh perfectly as the ornate shoes look more like bon bons than footwear and Dunst's youthful enthusiasm is apparent.
Marie Antoinette isn't strictly a biopic, or history lesson on the French Revolution. Instead it is a beautiful portrait of spoiled youth and the toxic culture of decadence that did her in.
"The Young Victoria"
Richard's Review: 4 stars
Despite being shot by soft candle light for a glowing historical feel, "The Young Victoria" isn't "Masterpiece Theatre." Accents and petticoats aside, this is a modern movie, with a modern sensibility, that mixes history, politics, romance, castle etiquette and backroom dealing into one frilly, appealing package.
Emily "Devil Wears Prada" Blunt is Queen Victoria, although when we first meet her she is just shy of coming of age to be Queen. She is a coddled young woman bound by the rules and manipulations of her mother the Duchess of Kent (Miranda Richardson) and her advisor Sir John Conroy ("RocknRolla's" Mark Strong).
Defying their wishes to make them co-Regents and share the throne, she becomes Queen in June 1837. She is a young woman enjoying the first blushes of freedom following years of repression but before she can be an effective leader, however, she must first learn the inner workings of the court, deal with a royal power-struggle and figure out her feelings for her first cousin, Prince Albert (Rupert Friend).
"The Young Victoria" has much in common with recent costume dramas like "Bleak House" and "Miss Potter." There is sumptuous production value, well appointed period details and enough powdered wigs to cover a hundred bald heads, but it also has something the others don't -- Emily Blunt.
Blunt has received good notices for her work since her breakout in "The Devil Wears Prada," but "The Young Victoria" may be the movie that really puts her on the map. She has shown her range before in everything from straight ahead roles in "Charlie Wilson's War" and "Dan in Real Life" to the quirkier "Sunshine Cleaning," but never before has she carried an entire movie.
She creates a lovely human portrait of a woman often thought of as stuffy and a bit too stiff upper lipped. Her Victoria is coming of age in a difficult time, but someone who embraces the future; learning from the past but looking forward. It's a strong performance that carries the whole movie.
Rupert Friend also impresses after his dismal showing in "Chéri" earlier this year. Ditto Mark Strong as the narcissistic Sir John Conroy. He follows his noteworthy work in "Body of Lies" with a wonderfully smarmy performance here.
"The Yong Victoria" isn't your father's -- or your mother's or grand parent's -- costume drama. It's a vital and romantic story that feels up to date even though the clothes and mannerisms are of another age.
"The Queen"
4 stars
Queen Elizabeth II has been a constant presence in most of our lives for sixty years, her stern, but comforting face staring up at us from our money and official portraits in government buildings. She talks to us at Christmas and even the Sex Pistols wrote a song about her. But even though she's been more documented than Paris Hilton in the press, I still never really felt a connection to her. Perhaps it is her regal remoteness, or that she doesn't show up at award shows or go to nightclubs, that has made her something of an enigma in our celebrity obsessed culture.
A new Stephen Frears movie, The Queen, focuses on a week in September 1997, the time between Princess Diana's death in Paris and her funeral in London. The newly elected Prime Minister Tony Blair sees his popularity skyrocket after he coins the term, The People's Princess, in a speech shortly after Diana's death, while support for Buckingham Palace falls to an all time low when it appears that the Queen doesn't share the country's grief.
What emerges is a complex portrait of a woman caught in the shifting tides of change. As portrayed by Helen Mirren, QEII comes across as a woman with a deep sense of duty, of right and wrong and dignity, but out of touch with her subjects. Her reaction to Diana's death is to grieve quietly, protect the young princes, Harry and William, and hold a discrete and dignified memorial. That her wishes run counter to the public and Prime Minister's ideas of a proper memorial shows how out of touch she is.
Using news footage director Stephen Frears skillfully demonstrates the fissure between the Queen and her subjects. Just hours after Diana's death is announced he shows us shots of the first bouquets of flowers left in tribute at the gate of Buckingham Palace. He comes back to this image several more times, and by the time we go back for the last time there is what seems to be acres of flowers, a tangible symbol of England's grief and the Queen's mishandling of the circumstances.
Privately we see the Queen's confusion and sadness as she realizes the public is no longer on her side. It isn't until Blair persists that she bends and makes a public statement and allows a public funeral. Despite his frustration with the Queen's decisions Blair comes to respect the woman who has given her life in service to her people.
Supporting actors turn in stellar performances. Alex Jennings as Prince Charles shows a rarely seen vulnerable side of the Prince, while James Cromwell's stuffy Prince Phillip is played for comic relief. At the heart of the film, however, is Mirren's performance.
Like many of the great on-screen portrayals of real people in recent years -- Jamie Foxx's Ray Charles, Phillip Seymour Hoffman's Truman Capote -- Helen Mirren takes a subject who would have been easy to mimic and given her a rich inner life. Just as Hoffman dug deeper to get beyond Capote's lisp and affected speech and show us a real person, Mirren breaks through the inscrutable royal façade to present a fully rounded character. Despite the famous line, "she ain't no human being," so memorably snarled by Johnny Rotten on God Save the Queen, Mirren's QEII is very much flesh and blood. The Queen does something that no other movie or television show has been able to do -- it humanizes Queen Elizabeth.
"Hoodwinked Too! Hood Vs. Evil"
Richard's Review: 1 star
The title of "Hoodwinked Too! Hood VS. Evil" tells you all you need to know about the movie: punny and not very funny. Too bad the Big Bad Wolf didn't get this one.
This animated action adventure kicks off with a rescue mission. The Happily-Ever-After squad is sent to save Hansel and Gretel (Bill Hader and Amy Poehler) -- imagine a Grimm's Fairy tale mixed with "Mission Impossible." There's the loopy lupine, the Big Bad Wolf (Patrick Warburton), his sidekick Twichy the squirrel, Granny (Glenn Close) and a host of other fairy tale characters.
The only above-the-title character missing is Little Red Rising Hood (Hayden Panettiere) who is off at the Sisterhood of the Kung Fu Bakers learning the discipline of baking as self defense. The mission goes awry and when Granny is kidnapped by Verushka, the witch with glowing eyes (Joan Cusack), Little Red Riding Hood must return to save Granny and protect the secret of the Super Truffle.
"Hoodwinked Too! Hood VS. Evil" is "Shrek-lite." It tries for the same kind of coolio mix of pop culture riffs and fairy tale lore that made the big green ogre a superstar, but comes up short. It's not for lack of trying. Every second of the movie is filled with action, one-liners and Looney Toon-ish slapstick. Trouble is, none of it is very funny, and some of it is downright xenophobic and verging on homophobic. Several of the jokes were old when Henny Youngman used them and the characterizations of some of the supporting characters are a bit eyebrow-raising.
Sure there are the usual kid-friendly messages about friendship, perseverance -- "A person can't fail unless they give up --and some unusual messages about dieting but unfortunately they are wrapped up in a dull package that tries too hard to be likeable and fails miserably.
"Prom"
Richard's review: 0 stars
"Prom," a new Disney film about high school's perfect "forever night" is such a predictable hodge podge of teen clichés it makes the old After School Specials look like Franz Kafka.
Here's what you need to know. Nova Prescott (Aimee Teegarden) is an overachieving senior and head of the prom committee. After spending weeks working on decorations for the big night a mysterious fire reduces her hard work to ash. Will the prom go on? Will school rebel Jesse Richter (Johnny Depp look-a-like Thomas McDonell) actually tune out to be a good guy? Will anyone care by the time the credits roll? Over the course of the extra long running time hearts are broken and mended, tears are spilled, rugs are cut and the true meaning of prom is revealed.
"Prom" is as direct-to-DVD a movie as has graced big screens in some time. I know it is meant for teens and I'm decades older than the target audience, but really, I think there is a case to be made to bring the filmmakers up on charges of elder abuse for making me sit through this tedious exercise in youth entertainment.
It's not only tedious, but insulting to the intelligence of its audience. I didn't expect great art or envelope pushing, but this is as by the book as it gets.
The characters all seem borrowed from The Breakfast Club only without the special touch that John Hughes brought to his movies. The Johnny Depp lookalike almost brings the bad boys thing to life, but the rest of them are straight outta Central Casting.
And as for the story, anyone who doesn't know how this is going to end by the time the opening credits have played has never seen a movie before.
Predictable in the extreme, even the stuff this kind of movie usually gets right, like the comic relief, doesn't bring any relief.
Like the dance the movie is named after "Prom" seems more exciting before you actually go to it… afterwards it's a letdown.
