Review: "Mary Queen of Scots"

"Mary Queen of Scots" is a very good film when it focuses on its core dynamic, the relationship between the titular character and her rival/sometime ally, Queen Elizabeth of England. Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie are terrific as proto-feminist icons vying with each other from afar, sharing an almost spiritual connection through their letters and envoys, even though they don't physically meet until the end.

But the movie wanders away from itself, getting caught in a thicket of Scottish court intrigue and misplacing Elizabeth for an hour or so. In the rambling narrative of civil wars, deposing of the queen followed by the immediate deposing of her deposers, double- and triple-crosses, a parade of husbands, etc., the film stumbles into a narrative bog that it never finds its way out of.

The best reasons to see it are the performances of Ronan and Robbie. Done up in balloon-bottom dresses, makeup and architecturally impressive hairdos, this is a full-on Period Costume Drama with exquisite production values. The arch language can be a little hard to understand at times, but it's not Shakespeare.

Ronan's Mary is a passionate, vibrant woman who wants to unite her kingdom, fractured by strife between Catholics and Protestants. As a Catholic who is recently a widow of the French king, she faces immediate, strident opposition from the heads of the Protestant church, who see her as a papist who bows before Rome instead of the cross.

Robbie's Elizabeth is in many ways the opposite. Regal in bearing but fractured in her soul, she is pulled and pinched by her male advisors (chiefly Guy Pearce as William Cecil) into various ill-advised courses of action. Threatened at first because Mary has a legitimate claim -- and clear ambitions -- to her own throne, she funds a civil war led by Mary's half-brother, James (James McArdle), who bounces between feelings of affection and usurpation for his sibling.

A lot of movies fudge the history in order to obtain a better story. "Mary Queen of Scots" goes the other way, sticking fastidiously to the record even when it would better to have ellipses and combining of characters. I'm not sure if you could keep all the players straight even with a playbill in hand.

Jack Lowden plays Lord Darnley, an ambitious fop who finagles his way into marrying Mary at the behest of his power-hungry father (Brendan Coyle). He thinks she will be a regular wife who allows her husband to be her king and master. But Mary uses him as a plaything, needing the hand of a British prince to cement her claim to England's throne, as well as an heir to make her a more salient prospect than the famously chaste and childless Elizabeth.

Speaking of, the film never adequately explores why Elizabeth is so resolutely sworn to virginity. She has a suitor, Robert Dudley (Joe Alwyn), who she trusts and takes into her bed (stopping their physicality at a certain point). She has a little speech where she says she feels "more a man than a woman" because of her throne, but it's a muddled mumble of a justification. I would've loved to explore that further.

The film is directed by Josie Rourke, a veteran of the stage making her film directorial debut, from a screenplay by Beau Willimon based on a book by John Guy. It has a very "stage" feel to it, even though the cinematography by John Mathieson is wonderful. The movie has a very tactile feel it, from the elaborate costumes to the puckered surface of Elizabeth's face after she is afflicted with the pox (thus explaining the stark white makeup and bright red wig she wore later in life).

The story of two opposing female monarchs, cousins who referred to each other as sisters but often fought as enemies, would make for a frightfully interesting movie. I'm still waiting to see it.

Review: "Ferdinand"

It's interesting that the two best animated films of the year -- "Coco" and "Ferdinand," in that order -- have an overt Latin theme. "Ferdinand" is set in Spain against the backdrop of the popular national sport of bullfighting. It is an egregiously cruel and useless endeavor, but rather than take angry shots at bullfighting, "Ferdinand" shows us the pull of the opposite of aggressiveness and violence.

"Ferdinand" is a film about love, but also about masculinity. It's no mistake that there are literally zero female cows in this story, which focuses on young bull calves and later grown adults. They have been reared their entire lives being taught that the best -- and only -- joy in their lives will come from being selected by a matador to fight in the ring.

The matadors are, of course, still batting 1.000 in the ongoing contest, but the bulls don't know that. They are bulls, so the only legitimate form of behavior is to be aggressive and competitive with all other bulls.

Sound familiar? The nexus of sports and male behavior is often a toxic space.

Then along comes Ferdinand, a gentle little calf who prefers sniffing flowers to fighting. He's mocked by the other young bulls at the Casa de la Toro, a breeding and training ranch for their kind, and not a little bullying takes place. But he eventually escapes that crucible and grows up on a remote farm raised by a gentle girl, who nurtures that side of him.

And grow he does. Ferdinand ends up as a truly monstrous-sized bull, bigger than even than the greatest champion bulls of old. But he doesn't care about being the biggest or the strongest -- he just enjoys his life of quiet and peace.

(He is voiced by John Cena, which is a rather contradictory choice for a character who hates battle. I guess you could argue that since Cena is a fake fighter, that makes it somehow OK.)

Later Ferdinand finds himself back on the bull ranch, where he's once again forced to vie for a spot in the ring, or be sent to the meat factory next door.

He finds that his old tormentors have grown up, and added a few new faces. There is Valiente (Bobby Cannavale), chief bully and enforcer of the bull code. Peyton Manning does the voice of Guapo, who acts as Valiente's wingman but has star aspirations of his own. Anthony Anderson is Bones, the undersized bull who joins in the treatment of Ferdinand, mostly because he would be the next logical target.

David Tennant does the voice of Angus, a woolly bull from Scotland who can't see very well because of the long hair in his eyes. And Tim Nordquist is Maquina, the result of genetic splicing who doesn't speak much and has very robotic qualities.

Kate McKinnon delights as Lupe, a "calming goat" assigned to Ferdinand to keep him chill, but ends up acting as his bullfighting coach. She's a typical animated sidekick, mostly there for comic relief, but she also provides a lot of heart and not a little wisdom.

There's also a trio of trouble-making hedgehogs, another threesome of smug horses who all have Germanic accents for some reason, and El Primero, the aging matador (Miguel Ángel Silvestre), who insists on fighting the greatest bull for his final match.

"Ferdinand" has all the ingredients for an enjoyable kiddie flick -- plenty of action, cute critter antics, a bit of gastrointestinal humor. But it's the deeper themes that give the film surprising weight and meaning. Just like the bull who prefers flowers, this is a different kind of animated film that wants to do more than merely entertain.

Review: "The Pirates! Band of Misfits"

 I'm an unabashed fan of stop-motion animation. It is in some ways the purest form of movie-making, since it requires the arduous frame-by-frame photography of still figures blended into the illusion of movement. Compared to that, sitting at a computer screen drawing with a laser stylus seems positively wimpy. It's also the reason why there simply aren't a lot of stop-motion feature films -- they're so darned hard to make.

I give respect to "The Pirates! Band of Misfits" for being one of the best-looking movies of this animation style, combining crisp, exaggerated puppetry with computer-generated backgrounds woven together so smoothly you probably won't even notice where one leaves off and the other begins. Compared to even the wonderful "Coraline" from just three short years ago, "Pirates" registers as a major evolution visually.

But the story just isn't quite there. Considering the painstaking method in which these films are made, the screenplay has a slapped-together feel to it, like the animators started shooting before the script was fully realized.

Based on the first two books of a series by Gideon Defoe, who also handled the screenplay adaptation, "Pirates" appears to pluck disparate story pieces and toss them carelessly into a gumbo. There are a lot of great elements there, but this one needed more time to cook, and maybe a more considered recipe.

 As if you couldn't tell from the title, it's about the wacky adventures of a group of seafaring pirates circa 1837. Now, pirates in 1837 were about where buggy-whip makers found themselves in 1920 -- on their way to history's dustbin.

And it isn't helped by the fact that these particular pirates are third-tier swashbucklers at best. Their haul of booty is less than bountiful lately, the ship's parrot isn't even a parrot, and the only thing the crew really has to look forward to is Ham Nite.

Heck, the captain doesn't even have a name -- he's known simply as The Pirate Captain. A decent chap with a bit of a preening nature, the Captain is vexed that he's never won the Pirate of the Year Award after more than two decades at sea.

He wavers on the edge between pomposity and self-defeat, trying to put on a good show for his crew but secretly fearful that he's a lame pirate leader (despite having both his original legs). Hugh Grant provides the Captain's voice, and the best compliment I can give him is that I never would have guessed it was him until I saw his name in the credits.

Other actors providing voices include Brendan Gleeson as a gouty older pirate, Martin Freeman as the noble first officer, Al Roker as a gentle giant and Anton Yelchin as an albino pirate. There's also a crew member who's obviously a woman (voiced by Ashley Jensen) disguised behind a terrible beard; it's pretty much openly acknowledged that she's way too curvaceous to be a pirate, but no one makes much of a fuss about it.

After being mocked by the front-runners for Pirate of the Year -- Jeremy Piven and Salma Hayek included -- the Captain and his crew bump into Charles Darwin and get into all sorts of unlikely adventures involving snooty scientists and Queen Victoria (Imelda Staunton), whose hatred of pirates is obsessive.

Director Peter Lord's last credit behind the camera was 12 years ago with the jaunty "Chicken Run," and I think that's the tone he and co-director Jeff Newitt were going for here: fast and loose. There's a lot of great throwaway jokes -- Darwin's monkey manservant is a hoot, communicating through silent-movie-style title cards.

But the pacing is off, as "The Pirates!" seems to speed up and slow down so we often feel like we're either missing the action, or waiting around for it.

2.5 stars out of four

Review: "Fright Night"

I may risk getting smacked around by my fellow Gen Xers, but let's face it -- the original "Fright Night" was just not a very good movie.

Somehow over the last quarter-century it's gained nostalgic cachet as a modern horror classic. But it's just not very scary, or very funny, or particularly distinctive in any way.

Maybe the one takeaway from writer/director Tom Holland's film was this idea of vampires not as mythical monsters, but real killers who could literally be living next door. The evolution of the vampire ethos has shuffled along down this same route to the glut of current incarnations, as blood-suckers not just preying on us but living among us while doing it.

The remake has a few things going for it. One is the casting of Colin Farrell as Jerry, the cool dude who moves in next door to teen hero Charley Brewster (Anton Yelchin -- who seems to be everywhere lately). With his dark, brooding good looks (assisted via computer-generated imagery), Farrell makes for a convincing nosferatu in the smoldering way audiences seem to prefer their vampires these days.

But the script by Marti Noxon just doesn't give Farrell very much to do other than pose and strut. With his strange mannerisms and cool-uncle shtick -- always addressing Charley as "Hey, guy..." -- Jerry seems more like a third-rate male model on depressants than a horrifying night killer.

The idea of transporting the action to Las Vegas, where homes in the suburban desert are being foreclosed or simply abandoned at a prodigious rate, reflects our downbeat national mood, as well as helping explain why locals aren't so curious about people suddenly showing up missing.

Toni Collette plays Charley's mom, a real estate agent who keeps so busy her garage is filled with For Sale signs. Her job is to be clueless, just like the rest of the adults Charley encounters, disbelieving his increasingly fantastic tales about Jerry. What a shame to see an actress of Collette's talents in a generic, lackluster role.

Imogen Poots plays Amy, Charley's new girlfriend, a pretty, popular member of the school's trend-setters. A recurring theme is that dweeby Charley is taking pains to conceal his formerly nerdy ways from Amy -- including disavowing his best friend, the equally geeky Ed. Ed is played by Christopher Mintze-Plasse, who's found a niche in Hollywood playing nerds with an inordinate amount of ego.

Roddy McDowall had one of his signature roles in the original, playing Peter Vincent, a scaredy-cat host of a low-rent cable TV creature feature show, who turns out to have some genuine expertise in the dark arts. That character is transformed, unimaginatively, into a Criss Angel-type magician played by David Tennant.

Instead of tremulous and pathetic, Peter Vincent is a soul-blasted wastrel who holes up in his Vegas penthouse with all sorts of occult items and weapons -- which we just know will be put to good use in the movie's final, unavoidable showdown.

Director Craig Gillespie, who's made offbeat films like "Mr. Woodcock" and "Lars and the Real Girl," has a nice eye and gives "Fright Night" some menacing visual flair. But this is a remake of a movie made without much care, and it shows.

1.5 stars out of four