Audiences and critics mostly ho-hummed at this biopic of “The Lord of the Rings” author J.R.R. Tolkien’s early life. I can see that: it’s a bit stolid, well-acted but not showy, provides insights into the life of a noted writer that will not come as any sort of surprise to anyone who already followed them.
Still, I found it to be a pleasant restatement of things I already knew: how Tolkien’s experience of the horrors of World War I, coupled with growing more or less as an orphan after the death of his father, led him to shape entire fantastical realms and mythologies inside his head.
Tolkien only started to put his creations down on paper for publication well into his life, middle-aged and a well-established academic and family man. “Tolkien,” directed by Dome Karukoski from a script by Stephen Beresford and David Gleeson, explores the childhood and early manhood that built toward that literary watershed.
Played by Nicholas Hoult, Roland (as most called him) earned a scholarship to a prestigious prep academy where he butted heads with well-heeled, privileged types. Eventually he befriended some of them, forming deep relationships that changed him irrevocably, especially when they all gallantly signed up for war – and some of them never came home.
A framing story set during the war depicts a wounded, feverish Tolkien desperately trying to find one of his friends in the middle of death and fire, with a loyal sergeant – named Sam, in case the connection wasn’t obvious enough – with visions of Sauron’s eye or the balrog appearing in his visions.
Lily Collins plays Edith Bratt, the slightly older girl who lived in the same boarding house as him as a teen, and with whom he began a furtive courtship that eventually morphed into a lifelong bond.
Whether you’re a LOTR fan or not, give “Tolkien” a chance on streaming or home video. It’s a compelling look at the private life of a man who arguably created one of the most popular works of fiction ever, and how he arrived in Middle-Earth.
As is common with smaller releases, bonus features aren’t quite as expansive. Still, there’s a feature-length commentary track by director Karukoski, a gallery of productions still, a “first look” featurette and deleted scenes with commentary.
I’m not sure what the recent fascination is for biopics of British authors of fantasy/children’s books. We’ve had not one but two of the “Winnie the Pooh” creator, and now here is “Tolkien,” based on the young life of “The Lord of the Rings” writer J.R.R. Tolkien.
It’s a stately and respectful film that doesn’t reveal any huge insights on John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, played empathetically by Nicholas Hoult -- especially if you already knew how his gruesome experiences in the trenches of World War I shaped his views and writing.
This is one of those rare movies that could’ve stood to be either much longer or much shorter.
There is imagery from the “Rings” saga interspersed throughout the film, flashes of imagination or dream fever where Tolkien sees a fiery Balrog rise from the furnace of the battlefield, or a towering crowned Sauron figure outlined over the twisted bodies of the fallen. The dragon Smaug and even the snowy steed Shadowfax make appearances.
It’s clear this movie would not exist without the success of the “Rings” trilogy and the subsequent (overly sprawling) film adaptation of his earlier novel, “The Hobbit.”
My guess is this movie will appeal more to hardcore fantasy fans who want to see the inspiration behind their beloved stories than a more general audience.
The Tolkien family has apparently objected to the film, no doubt because they were not consulted on its production (and presumably received no remuneration). But it’s a fairly standard biopic that certainly does not seek to uncover character flaws or hidden secrets.
The film largely focuses on two sets of relationships that defined Tolkien. Orphaned at a young age and awarded a scholarship to a prestigious prep school, Roland (as he was known) at first clashes with and then befriends a trio of upper-crust boys. (They are played by Anthony Boyle, Patrick Gibson and Tom Glynn-Carney in their adult years.)
All are artistically inclined but afraid to reveal their passions to their stodgy parents. In Roland’s case, this means the caring but strict priest (Colm Meany) who acts as his legal guardian.
Dubbing themselves the Tea Club and Barrovian Society, or TCBS, they spend their years at the Barrons shop exchanging poetry and musical inspiration. When all four enlist in the military upon the advent of war, it sets up a series of expected, but still devastating tragedies.
The other significant piece of the tale is his romance with Edith Bratt (Lily Collins), who came to live at the same boarding house where Roland and his younger brother (who’s not given much of a presence) were assigned. She is a piano prodigy who feels hampered by her lack of opportunities, and the pair soon begin a furtive courtship.
The main story is framed by a war sequence in which Roland sets out on a quest to find one of his school days chums, fearing for his safety. Wracked with fever, he is accompanied by a diminutive but stout junior officer named Sam (Craig Roberts), and it’s hard to miss the reference to Frodo’s journey to Mount Doom with a loyal lackey in tow.
It’s also interesting to see how Tolkien was building the little pieces that would become Middle Earth going back to his childhood, with drawings and snippets of stories festooning his walls and cramming his desk. This is a man who created his own languages, and then used them to weave a mythology as vast and intricate as anything by the Greek or Chinese.
I’m not sure if “Tolkien” unearths any tremendous understanding of the author’s life, other than he was a diligent, talented loner who was shaped equally by tragedy and fellowship.
I’m personally skeptical of the idiom that you have to suffer in order to be a great artist, but here is a man who would not have sprung forth an entire world without experiencing the darkest hells of this one.
"The Day of the Jackal" was my father's favorite film. Or I should say it is his favorite film. I'm not sure what the proper term to use is when the person is no longer with us but the movie endures.
I'd like to think that love survives death, whether for another person or a work of art, so we'll choose the present tense.
The film has just been released in a gorgeous Blu-ray special edition out Sept. 25 that includes plenty of nifty bonus material.
I saw it with him first on HBO when I was about 10 or 11 years old, and my lifelong love of cinema was already in full bloom. I remember sitting together in our living room, him on his recliner in the corner and me lying on the ground directly in front of the TV with my head propped against a triangular pillow, my usual spot. Several other viewings took place together over the years.
He, and I, adore the absolute leanness of the narrative. Even at 142 minutes, there is not an ounce of fat in this spy thriller about a British assassin hired by French insurgents to kill President Charles de Gaulle in the summer of 1963. It's essentially a crime procedural, but instead of following the investigators as they look into a deed already committed, it's a parallel race as we track the titular killer striving to finish his contract while an international cadre of law enforcement types scrambles to prevent it.
Many movies would go on to copy this style, including 1993's "In the Line of Fire." Although there is a cast of hundreds, the story very much focuses on two figures just like the Clint Eastwood film, the assassin and the man leading the hunt. Though here there's no ongoing taunting between hero and villain as they engage in their intricate dance, only meeting at the very end.
Indeed, the film has such an incredible sense of verisimilitude, weaving actual events and locations in with fictional ones, that I had long assumed it was based on a genuine assassination attempt. In fact, the inspiration comes from the 1971 fictional novel by Frederick Forsyth, adapted for the screen by Kenneth Ross and directed by the great Fred Zinneman ("High Noon," "From Here to Eternity").
This is perhaps the signature role of Edward Fox's career, displaying an icy charm as the Jackal, aka Charles Calthrop, known as the best hit man in England, and perhaps the world. He's a chameleon-like figure, putting on and taking off identities like changes of his well-tailored suits. A compact man with a lean, boyish figure and feathered blond hair, the Jackal is as suave as anyone who's played James Bond.
The strength of "Jackal" is that we find ourselves rooting for the Jackal and his nemesis, Deputy Police Commissioner Claude Lebel (Michel Lonsdale). Like the Jackal, Lebel displays a single-minded commitment in his pursuit of his goal, literally sleeping in his office for weeks on end, assisted only by his loyal number two (Derek Jacobi).
Both men also have a tendency to be curt and impatient with those who stand in the way of his goals. The difference being that the Jackal simply kills anyone who opposes him, while Lebel hunkers down and burrows into the weak spots of the bureaucracy.
No doubt my dad's favorite moment of the film comes late when Lebel reveals the leak within the cabinet of French ministers who have been sworn to secrecy on the affair. One of them had been seduced by an insurgent spy, and Lebel plays a recording of her feeding information from his phone. Confessing his weakness, the guilty man leaves the meeting abruptly (and later commits suicide).
The ministers are pleased, having been generally dismissive of Lebel, seeing him as a low-level flunky -- not a government official but a gumshoe cop. As the meeting is breaking up, the haughty chief minister (Alan Badel) asks him how he knew which of their personal phone lines to tap. Not even bothering to look up from his papers, Lebel states that he couldn't know which of them was the source of the leak, so he tapped all of their phones.
Zinnemann holds this moment for the briefest of seconds, just long enough to register the shocked faces of the high and mighty. In our shared viewings, this was always followed by my father's high-pitched cackle of glee.
I won't bother with a detailed plot synopsis. Suffice it to say, members of the OAS -- a real splinter group of French military enraged by de Gaulle's decision to grant Algeria independence -- hire the Jackal after their own assassination attempts fail and they are forced into hiding in Rome.
He's a one-man show, doing all the planning and scouting personally. His only help is a weapons expert who creates the nifty collapsible rifle that can be disguised as a pair of crutches, and a pornographer who makes false ID's on the side. The latter tries to bribe the Jackal out of an extra £1,000, and finds himself stuffed into a locker for his trouble.
As he executes his intricate plan, the Jackal moves from England to Italy to France, swapping out vehicles and passports as needed. He even displays a pan-sexual mercenary attitude, seducing both a wealthy married woman (Delphine Seyrig) and a young gay businessman (Anton Rodgers) when he finds the need to hide out from the authorities. In the movie's historically accurate depiction of 1963, the only way authorities had to track tourists' movements was through hotel guest cards, picked up manually by motorcycle police.
"The Day of the Jackal" is not a character study, but the film does find ways to penetrate the interiors of its chief two characters. The Jackal's cover is blown early in the execution of the plan, yet he stubbornly continues with the attempt, even knowing he's a single man arrayed against thousands of Europe's best law enforcement officers.
Why? Partly it's personal arrogance, of course, but we also sense a large helping of professional ambition. In his initial meeting with the OAS leaders, the Jackal demanded a payment of $500,000 (just over $4 million in today's dollars) with the justification that whoever pulls off the job "can never work again." In other words, whether de Gaulle lives or dies the Jackal knows that his career as an international assassin is over -- and he's rather go out with a win.
Taut, supremely entertaining and with never a dull moment, "The Day of the Jackal" may not be one of my all-time favorite films. But I can't disagree with my dad -- it deserves its place as one of the best thriller ever made.
I hadn't even seen "Tomb Raider" yet and I was already sick of hearing about it.
How they translated the video game series into a rebooted film franchise for a new generation. About all the nifty stunts and set pieces. How tiny Swedish star Alicia Vikander worked out for months and subsisted on one of those fish-avocados-and-eggs diets in order to bulk up and get the prerequisite bumpy belly.
(I really don't know when in our popular culture bumpy bellies became a thing. It used to be you wanted to look trim and tight. Now we're supposed to want our stomachs to look rippled potato chips. Seems like a screwy contradiction, if you ask me.)
As a ciswhiteoldishmale, I've been reliably instructed that I'm not allowed to comment on women's bodies. Nuts to that. If you make a big-budget movie based on a game whose major appeal was a heroine who looked like a Victoria's Secret model, then her appearance is well within the bounds of discussion -- especially when it impacts how the film plays.
This is decidedly different take on Lara Croft than the Angelina Jolie movie from 2001. Say what you will about that movie, but Jolie seemed more than physically capable. Could take it, and dish it out, like any male action hero counterpart. In a word, she was tough.
Vikander, in a word, is frail. Even with the aforementioned buffing-up, her look is still more ballerina than badass. Her Lara gets her ass kicked a lot in the movie, almost entirely by male combatants (with the exception of a female sparring partner near the beginning, who also wipes the floor with her). And she emits a lot of girlish squeaks and dainty yelps in the process.
So it's a much more vulnerable version of the character. I guess the idea for director Roar Uthaug and screenwriters Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Alastair Siddons was to have Lara more relatable. But the overall effect is to make her come across as weak.
Arriving in the footsteps of the physically and thematically muscular "Wonder Woman," this feels like something of a retreat.
Lara isn't even a real adventurer as the story opens, just an orphaned young woman working as a bicycle courier and doing a little kickboxing on the side. She's a sadgirl because her beloved daddy (Dominic West) disappeared mysteriously seven years ago, leaving her with regrets -- along with a massive fortune and estate, if only she'll sign the papers declaring him legally dead.
This she has refused to do, because... well, there is no good reason. Only movie people would toil, unable to even pay their gym fees, when there's billions at your beckoning.
Anyway, she discovers that father was secretly an Indiana Jones-type archeologist. When he went missing, he was working on the mystery of an ancient Japanese queen named Himiko, a sorceress who could kill with just a touch. Her tomb is shrouded in secrecy on a mystery island, and the elder Croft was trying to prevent an evil group called the Order of Trinity from finding it and exploiting her wretched powers.
In his death decree, daddy Croft instructs Lara to destroy all his research so as not to endanger the fate of the entire world. Instead, she carefully gathers it all up and books a ship so she can sail to the island and deliver it right to the bad guys.
This Lara Croft may be tight in the abs, but she's soft in the head.
Walton Goggins plays Vogel, the heavy leading a force of mercenaries and slave labor on the island. Unable to escape himself until he's completed his mission, Vogel stumbles about in a fog, occasionally shooting someone to make a point. Daniel Wu plays Lu Ren, the helpful ship captain who becomes Lara's henchman.
"Tomb Raider" is a decently entertaining movie, especially in the second half as they make their way into the tomb and encounter all sorts of nasty traps, tricks and puzzles. I never played any of the video games, but those who have tell me the film's plot follows the recent reboot of the game fairly faithfully.
I especially liked one river-born sequence, where Lara is in danger of being swept over a massive waterfall, and uses the carcass of a rotted B-17 bomber as her (rapidly deteriorating) lifeline.
I'm not sure we needed a wimpier version of Lara Croft, or indeed if we needed another film version of the video game at all. Energetic but unnecessary, it sits there like a giant meatball, simply existing.
The remake of “Murder on the Orient Express” starts slow, chuffing away and spinning its wheels with little forward movement, but gradually builds a head of steam. It propels us through the usual twists and turns of a classic whodunit, as a dozen suspects are queried and sorted in the search for a killer.
By the end of the film, it has completely transcended the murder/mystery genre and become an emotionally affecting treatise on right and wrong, evil deeds and revenge.
I wasn’t expecting this movie, but I confess I wasn’t expecting much at all. I’ve neither read the book by Agatha Christie nor seen the 1974 film version.
(I assure you I mean to: it’s currently sitting in my Netflix DVD queue. Yes, some of us still pay for the shiny disc plan.)
Kenneth Branagh directs and stars as the famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot -- everybody wants to call him “Hercules” -- an ostentatiously mustachioed gentleman whose courtly demeanor hides a mind as troubled as it is brilliant.
Poirot is vexed by “imbalance” -- whether it be a tie knotted askew, two boiled eggs for breakfast that are not the same size or a plot to take another human life. People wonder at his marvelous deductions, but as he explains to an admirer, when things are not perfectly aligned it stands out to him as plain as the nose on your face.
Even if, like me, you are innocent of the book and other movie, you probably know the basic plot: Poirot is plopped onto a train full of colorful characters, and one of them turns up gruesomely dead. Trapped by an avalanche that has derailed the locomotive, they stew together as the masterful investigator sifts through the evidence, which includes a torrent of lies and misdirection.
Michael Green provides the screenplay, which near as I can figure follows the book and other film pretty closely. The ethnicities and vocations of a few of the characters are shifted around, but the basic dynamics remain the same.
This is billed as one of those classic “all-star casts” -- though, truth be told, it’s more like half a cast of stars, most of them faded, a quarter recognizable character actors and a quarter you’ve never heard of.
Johnny Depp is the biggest name, playing a slimy, scarred American businessman named Ratchett. Michelle Pfeiffer turns up as Caroline Hubbard, an often-divorced woman apparently looking for her next sugar daddy, and Poirot is her prime candidate. Josh Gad is Hector MacQueen, Ratchett’s resentful secretary, and his manservant, Masterman, is played by Derek Jacobi.
Judi Dench, alas, is given little to do as a snooty displaced Russian princess, though Daisy Ridley delights and surprises as Mary Debenham, a smart and resourceful governess. Lucy Boynton and Sergei Polunin are addled dancers/diplomats/royalty.
Willem Dafoe plays Gerhard Hardman, a xenophobic German scientist, and Leslie Odom Jr. plays Arbuthnot, a black British doctor. Penelope Cruz is Pilar Estravados, a nurse turned missionary whose job is to make devilish pronouncements about the evil that men (and maybe women) do.
It’s a sumptuous movie of gorgeous costumes and exquisite settings. The Orient Express is not some railway for bumpkins, but a four-star hotel for the rich on wheels. Somehow even after the train engine is stopped, there’s still plenty of heat and five-course meals.
I’ll admit the turnabouts of the plot started to grow a little tiresome for me -- “It’s him! No, it’s her!” -- but the movie really starts to gel just past the midway point. Poirot is basically a human Google: he knows everything about everyone, everywhere.
I wouldn’t think to give any hints about the ending, other than to see it’s a humdinger. Forty years after it was a movie, and 40 more for the book, “Murder on the Orient Express” still has surprises aplenty.
Taking classic Disney cartoons and turning them into live-action picture is a recent and largely wasted effort. Most of the resulting films have been silly and swollen. (See – or rather, don’t – the two competing Snow White adaptations.)
“Cinderella” is the remarkable exception, a smart and heartwise movie with plenty of pluck.
Lily James plays the titular Ella, who is given the “Cinder” affixation by her nasty stepsisters (Holliday Grainger and Sophie McShera) because she sleeps by the sooty hearth for warmth. Ella’s days and nights are a ceaseless march of work and disdain, but she retains her sense of joy. Her wondrous childhood was taken from her, first by the death of her mother and then her father’s marriage to the harsh, vain Lady Tremaine and subsequent orphaning.
One of the film’s triumphs is treating its characters as complex human beings, so the “cruel stepmother,” ably played by Cate Blanchett, is a bundle of neuroses and bad karma rather than the personification of evil. The prince (Richard Madden) even gets something to do other than be handsome. Helena Bonham Carter, who we normally expect in the dark roles, shines as the fairy godmother.
The CGI is astounding without overshadowing the story, a gentle fable about how appearances can be deceiving. It’s a great-looking film that builds on the animated tale rather than simply regurgitating it.
“Cinderella” comes with a good variety of bonus features, though you’ll need to buy the blu-ray combo pack to get most of them.
The DVD comes with “Frozen Fever,” a new animated short starring Elsa and Anna, plus “Ella’s Furry Friends,” a featurette on the animal actors.
With the combo pack you add five deleted scenes, an alternate opening sequence and three more featurettes: “A Fairy Tale Comes to Life,” “Costume Test Fun” and “Staging the Ball.”
I've not been a fan of this recent trend of turning old fairy tales and/or animated classics into live-action spectacles. The competing Snow White flicks were exercises in excess, and while visually sumptuous "Maleficent" suffered from serious storytelling issues. The less said about "Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters," the better.
But "Cinderella" finds the spark of magic missing from those other films.
It's heartfelt and wise, paying homage to the Disney cartoon while smartly inserting more modernistic sensibilities into an ancient tale. Director Kenneth Branagh and screenwriter Chris Weitz craft something that is at once old-fashioned and newfangled, and is sure to delight little princesses everywhere -- and many of their kings and queens, and possibly even some princeling brothers, too.
They even manage to render the wicked stepmother... well, sympathetic's not the right word -- let's say more relatable as a flesh-and-blood character, as opposed to simply representing a stereotype.
Lily James plays young Ella, a country girl raised at a modest estate by loving parents, who alas soon depart the scene. They're played by Hayley Atwell and Ben Chaplin, both emotionally resonant presences despite limited screen time. They teach her to "have courage and be kind," something that becomes harder when the socially climbing Lady Tremaine (an icy Cate Blanchett) comes into Ella's life, along with her spoiled daughters Anastasia (Holliday Grainger) and Drizella (Sophie McShera).
She's relegated to the role of servant, living in the attic and toiling all day with only a few mice and other creatures as her companions. She is sneeringly dubbed "Cinderella" by her betters because of her penchant for sleeping by the kitchen hearth for warmth, which usually results in a sooty complexion.
In one of the movie's more sensible alterations, the stepsisters and stepmother are no longer horrid hags; ugliness is no longer the calling card for depravity within. Indeed, Ella spends much of the story in frump mode, with only a toothy smile and a warm heart to recommend her. Her transformation for the royal ball at the hands of her fairy godmother (Helena Bonham Carter, who we'd normally expect to see in the stepmother role) is just that -- a welcome respite from the soon-to-return drudgery.
The CG effects for her change are quite wondrous, with the pumpkin, mice and goose -- aided by a couple of garden lizards -- making for a dazzling coach and company.
Richard Madden ("Game of Thrones") plays the prince, who also gets an upgrade beyond Generic Handsome Dude in a Tux. He wants to marry for love, while his ailing father (Derek Jacobi) urges him to wed for advantage -- egged on by the smarmy Grand Duke (Stellan Skarsgård). He's smitten by Ella when they run into each other in the forest, each mistaking the other for something other than what they are.
Of course, all that gets sorted out in the end. "To be seen as we truly are" is the lesson here, with gowns and glass slippers as simply the enchantment that helps things move along.
It's the little touches that make "Cinderella" an unexpected delight. I adored the use of "Lavender's Blue," an old British nursery song, as both a musical and narrative theme. ("When I am king, dilly, dilly, you shall be queen.") Lily James makes for a sweet and self-assured Cinderella, who doesn't need a princess' crown to be noble and true.
Note: The film is preceded by "Frozen Forever," an animated short that's a follow-up to the hit feature of 2013. It gathers all the old gang together for another go-round that's fun and sweet, though the song isn't on par with the original music.
I don't usually write about television movies, but 1988's "The Tenth Man" has more cinematic roots than most TV.
It was based on a novel by Graham Greene, whose work has been the basis for a number of movies -- "The End of the Affair," "The Quiet American," "The Third Man," etc. And director Jack Gold had plenty of feature film experience as well as television.
And, of course, it stars a trio of magnificent English film actors: Anthony Hopkins, Kristin Scott Thomas and Derek Jacobi. Given that pedigree, I'm willing to give it an honorary inclusion into the Reeling Backward club.
It's a tragic tale about fear and regret, and the impossibility of escaping the past. Its hero begins the story in shame, and ends it with a brave sacrifice. He is a liar and a coward, and yet culminates his journey ennobled.
Hopkins plays Jean Louis Chavel, a wealthy French barrister who is rounded up by the Nazis in the early days of the German occupation of France. There is no reason for his arrest, or I should say there is no particular reason that he should be among those arrested -- he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Germans are plucking men off the street at random to hold as hostages. Whenever the French Resistance stage any sort of violence, a few of the prisoners are executed.
(I should note that although all the major characters are French, everyone speaks in the finest upper-crust British accents -- one of those conceits of filmmaking we're asked to just swallow.)
Sure enough, after some trouble the Germans announce that three of 30 Frenchmen will be executed in the morning. As an added twist of the knife, they will force the prisoners themselves to choose from among their number the condemned. After drawing lots, Chavel is horrified to find he has gotten one of the three pieces of paper with an "X" on it.
After breaking down in a tearful display, Chavel offers to give 100,000 francs to any man who will take his place. When this fails to net any takers, he increases the deal to include everything he owns, including his mansion estate in the countryside near Paris. Michel Mangeot (Timothy Watson), a sickly young man, agrees to the bargain, and sees to it that Chavel himself makes out the legal papers leaving everything to Michel's sister and mother.
Interestingly, the title refers not to Chavel, who is actually the 27th of 30 prisoners to draw lots, but Michel, who nabs the 10th ballot. Or perhaps it's just a reference to one in 10 men being executed ... but that would mean there were three Tenth Men. No, I think it's Michel. I'm always fascinated by movie titles that don't mean what they appear to, like "The Last of the Mohicans," which refers not to Hawkeye but his adoptive father, Chingachgook.
Flash to the end of the war, and a bedraggled Chavel emerges from prison, bearded and wearing ragged clothes. Finding a ring in the cobblestones near the Seine River -- which he had contemplated hurling himself into -- he pawns it for enough money to travel to his former estate. He finds the grounds overgrown and the shutter hanging askew, but otherwise the house is intact. Chavel is startled to discover that it is not in fact abandoned, but still occupied by Michel's sister Therese Mangeot (Scott Thomas) and her elderly mother (Brenda Bruce).
He gives Therese a fictitious name, suspecting that she may blame him for the death of Michel -- a wise move. Turns out she is boiling with rage, waiting for the day Chavel returns so she can spit in his face and shoot him (though not necessarily in that order). He tells her he was in prison with her brother and knew Chavel, so she hires him as a servant. His main job is to alert her if Chavel should ever turn up.
There's a bit of literary conceit there, especially the idea that Chavel's former neighbors and the local priest (Cyril Cusack) wouldn't recognize him after being away just three years and growing a beard.
You can probably guess what happens next: Chavel finds himself falling for Therese, but can't bring himself to declare his true identity and feelings, knowing she burns with hatred for him.
It's a very subtle, interior performance by Hopkins, the sort of thing that typified his career before he won an Oscar for "Silence of the Lambs" three years later. The way his eyes fall to the floor, and his hands rub his forehead and cheek, it's almost like Chavel is trying to hide from himself. It would be interesting to know what sort of man he was before the war, bu the movie doesn't provide much illumination before he's thrown in prison.
Things grow more melodramatic in the last third or so with the arrival of an impostor (Derek Jacobi) claiming to be Chavel. The son of one of the other prisoners, he heard the story of Chavel and decided to make use of it. He's on the run from the authorities for collaborating with the Germans and needs a place to stay for the night. But smartly sensing the odd dynamic unfolding in the Chavel mansion, he decides to make a play for bigger stakes.
I enjoyed "The Tenth Man" for the most part -- the acting is splendid, and it has a dour, sober quality and an authentic period feel. Sort of "Masterpiece Theatre" meets Dostoevsky.
Perhaps you can't shoot a basketball, or your spelling is atrocious. I for one have a terrible memory for names. What is universal about these myriad faults is that we all carefully protect our shortcomings by keeping them private, or finding a way to work around them.
(True fact: I keep a chart of my street block so I know what to call neighbors.)
But what if the one thing you were terrible at also happened to be the sole criteria by which everyone judged you? If your inescapable duty was confounded by your greatest disability?
Such was the fate of King George VI of England, who suffered from a crippling stutter. He was helped by an unconventional Australian speech therapist, and was able to serve as an inspiration to his people during the dark days of World War II.
"The King's Speech," the film about his struggle, is straight out of the school of Inspirational Tales from History. What it lacks in novelty it makes up for in executing this type of movie-making about as well as it can be done.
Colin Firth as the king and Geoffrey Rush as his therapist offer a pair of tremendous performances, in roles that pop off the screen notwithstanding the constraints of a slightly staid screenplay (by David Seidler).
Despite being a loving father and husband, dedicated Navy officer and utterly loyal to the monarchy and his nation, Prince Albert (as he was known before his coronation) was belittled by his family simply because he stammered. Public speeches were embarrassing, halting disasters, both for Albert and the people who had to listen to them.
His father (a brief but memorable appearance by Michael Gambon) regrets the new requirements technology forces upon the monarchy, like his annual Christmas speeches over the radio.
"Now we must invade our subjects' home and ingratiate ourselves," the king complains. "We have become actors!"
The second in line for the throne, Albert was safely shunted to minor appearances where he could keep a low profile, which suited him just fine.
At the prodding of his wife (Helena Bonham Carter), the soon-to-be-king seeks help from Lionel Logue (Rush), whose methods are unorthodox, to say the least. He demands the prince come to his office, rather than calling at the palace. On his home turf, Lionel insists they treat each other as equals -- even presuming to call the prince "Bertie," a familial nickname.
There are also strange breathing exercises, tongue twisters, singing his words and, most memorably, spewing a string of expletives that in of itself earned the film an R rating. (It probably would've gotten a G otherwise.)
Lionel's lessons intensify as Albert takes up the crown -- even burrowing into his personal life. It is Lionel's professional opinion that no child is born a stutterer: Some kind of trauma compels them to be afraid of their own voice.
Firth is by turns droll, arrogant and sensitive as Albert/George -- the sort of pampered son who has more grit and wry humor than anyone suspects. Asked by his daughter what Hitler is shouting about in a newsreel, there's no hesitation to his comeback: "I don't know. But he seems to be saying it rather well."
Director Tom Hooper, who helmed last year's excellent "The Damned United," recognizes the material for what it is and emphasizes its obvious strengths. "The King's Speech" knows exactly how to get its point across.
