Belle *****

Short Take: Virtually perfect historical drama on the life of Dido Elizabeth Belle, an 18th century woman of mixed race who was raised as an English aristocrat.

Reel Take: We are not even halfway through 2014 and already I have 3 films that will currently go on my Ten Best list for the year. Of course that is subject to change but it’s hard to imagine easily finding 7 more films to fill out the list much less remove any from my current list. For the record they are…1)The Grand Budapest Hotel, 2) Only Lovers Left Alive (see Michelle’s review this issue), and 3) Belle.

When I first saw the trailers for Belle, I was wary. Yes it looked to be a sumptuously produced period piece about a little known historical figure but it also looked as if it could be potentially heavy handed (ala 12 Years A Slave) concerning its subject matter of racial inequality. I am happy to report that it was nothing of the sort. Belle is a first rate historical drama that focuses first on the character and then on any social issues that have to be dealt with.

Dido Elizabeth Belle (1761-1804) was a bi-racial woman, raised as an English aristocrat by her uncle who happened to be the Lord Chief Justice of England. The family considered her the equal of her cousin Elizabeth Murray but that was not the case outside of the family estate. She eventually married a Frenchman who worked in the local parish, had three sons, and was buried in the Parish cemetery. Her last direct descendant died in 1975.

Those are the known facts. Director Amma Asante, inspired by a painting of Dido and her cousin Elizabeth (you can google it), developed a screenplay around her life, added in certain historical occurrences, made certain changes (her future husband is not French but a vicar’s son concerned with social injustice) and wound up making a movie that has something to say without that message getting in the way of the characters.

Aiding the director immensely in this task are a series of wonderful performances headed up by Brit TV actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Belle. Tom Wilkinson charms and intimidates as her uncle the Lord Chief Justice while Emily Watson provides the backbone and the conscience of the film as his wife. Matthew Goode appears all too briefly as Belle’s father, a commissioned Naval officer who is off to sea and out of her life.

This film is also beautiful to look at. The cinematography is stunning, a real cut above that seen in most period films with its vivid use of color composition and employment of natural lighting. The costumes look like the real deal and the performers seem quite comfortable in wearing them adding to the authenticity of what we are seeing and making it easy for us to be swept up in Belle’s story.

As anyone who reads my reviews on a regular basis knows, I rarely give movies a 5 star rating. My basic qualification for that is a combination of two things. 1) I wouldn’t change a thing about the movie and 2) does the movie have mainstream potential? Without that the film cannot hope to be seen by enough people on a consistent basis to ultimately gain classic status. Belle easily meets both criteria and you should seek it out and quickly for “costume dramas” have their niche audience and don’t stick around for long.

Rated PG-13 for thematic elements and some language.
Review by Chip Kaufmann

Godzilla ***1/2

Short Take: Expensive remake of the original 1954 film attempts to return the series to its serious roots but is overlong and doesn’t give the big guy enough screen time.

Reel Take: According to various sources, this is the 28th Godzilla film (29 if you count the 1998 Roland Emmerich-Matthew Broderick effort which most fans don’t) and it is by far and away the most expensive having cost $150 million. Even adjusting for inflation, that’s an outrageous budgetary increase and it is this added expense that keeps this version from being better than it is. Fortunately, it still manages to be pretty good.

The opening prologue, set in 1999, is remarkable and gets the movie off to a fine start. A mysterious earthquake causes the complete collapse of a Japanese nuclear plant (shades of the recent Fukishima disaster). This results in the death of the mother (Juliette Binoche) of the principal human character and the unhinging of his father (Ryan Cranston), an American engineer working there.

Move forward 15 years to the present. The father is arrested at a protest rally outside the site of the former plant. With the aid of his son (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) who is now in the U.S. military, they secretly enter the quarantine zone only to discover that it contains no radiation whatsoever. We soon find out that there is a giant creature lying dormant under the ruins that feeds on radiation and this caused the plant to collapse.

Meanwhile a Japanese anthropologist (Ken Wattanabe) named Dr. Serizawa (the name of the scientist in the original) knew of the creature’s existence and was hoping to keep it dormant so he could study it but now it’s time for it to wake up. The creature dubbed M.U.T.O. takes off for parts unknown and Serizawa wonders if Godzilla will reappear to restore the balance of nature (no reason is given for this). A second creature appears of the opposite sex and…you know the rest.

Instead of Tokyo, first Honolulu and then San Francisco take the brunt of the creatures’ attacks with eggs being laid in the City by the Bay. Godzilla finally appears and, after various attempts to stop him fail, he receives a Navy escort and then battles both creatures. Much destruction ensues. Meanwhile Aaron Taylor-Johnson goes after the eggs to avenge his father who died when the first creature escaped.

The climactic battle is everything you would expect it to be and is rendered in state-of-the-art CGI which is actually quite impressive and not overdone. If you don’t know how it turns out then you’ve obviously never seen a Godzilla movie before. There a few new wrinkles added just to do something a little different, but in the end there are no real surprises.

What is surprising, however, is how lethargic the film is in places. After the brilliant opening, the movie bogs down in poorly paced exposition before the M.U.T.O. (an updated version of another classic Japanese monster, Rodan) appears and then we have to go through another slow stretch until Godzilla finally shows up one hour into the film.

Long time fans of the big guy may find themselves a little disappointed but younger viewers used to CGI and familiar with Christophernolanitis (an overly serious approach to pop material) should be in their element. With an opening weekend of close to $100 million, one can hear Godzilla’s sequel footsteps approaching.

Rated PG-13 for sequences of destruction, mayhem and creature violence.
Review by Chip Kaufmann

Million Dollar Arm ***1/2

Short Take: Desperate to stay in business, a sports agent explores baseball’s final frontier – India.

REEL TAKE: Made by Disney, based on a true story, and targeted for a main stream audience, many people are pre-disposed to immediately dislike and/or dismiss Million Dollar Arm. Truth be known, I was very pleasantly surprised. Million Dollar Arm is just plain likeable.

John Hamm stars as JB Bernstein, a once successful sports agent who’s on the verge of losing his business. While channel surfing one night he catches a game of cricket and decides to go to India in search of the next great pitching sensation. He and his business partner (The Daily Show’s Aasif Mandvi) launch a nation-wide contest in search of a “million dollar arm.” JB’s rationale is that if you bring baseball to India, you bring 40 million new fans to baseball.

Armed with nothing but a retired MLB talent scout (Alan Arkin) and a rag-tag crew who know little of baseball, JB sets out to stage a televised talent search and begins a journey that will change his life. After thousands of young (and old) men try out, two boys emerge as pitching hopefuls, Dinesh (Madhur Mittal) and Rinku (Suraj Sharma) and one young man, Amit (Pitobash) turns out to be a great volunteer in the effort. Now JB (with Amit to translate), just has to teach them how to play baseball and get them signed to major league teams in less than ten months.

Once stateside, JB thinks his life will return to what it was – hot cars, hot models and lots of money. But when the boys have to move in with the confirmed bachelor everything changes. Adapting to a new country is hard on the boys and adapting to the boys is hard on JB. Because this is a Disney film and a true story, we know that it all ends well.

Million Dollar Arm is entirely predictable, but with the exception of one Parent Trap moment, it’s not overly saccharine. Playing Don Draper easily lends itself to infusing JB Bernstein as a man with definite room for improvement, and Hamm does a nice job. Alan Arkin and Aasif Mandvi are a delight as always. Lake Bell is a refreshing challenge for JB as his tenant and love interest, and Mittal, Sharma and Pitobash are charming as baseball’s newest transplants.

Million Dollar Arm is just a good old fashioned feel good movie – no more, no less.

Rated PG for mild language and suggest content.
Review by Michelle Keenan

Only Lovers Left Alive *****

Short Take: Not your daughter’s ‘Team Edward’ vampire story, but rather a love story for the ages.

REEL TAKE: Only Lovers Left Alive may be writer director Jim Jarmusch’s best work yet. It may also be one of the best vampire films to date as well as one of the most unique. Jarmusch has been writing and directing unique films for thirty years. And while his work is always slightly offbeat, you can’t lump his films together stylistically, nor adequately describe them (as exhibited by my feeble attempt here to review this film, and in my DVD pick of the month, Jarmusch’s Dead Man). You don’t so much as watch his films as you let them envelop you. He fires on all cylinders – script, actors, photography, music, pacing – all working together to create uniquely atmospheric films that defy categorization.

Only Lovers Left Alive isn’t a vampire movie about two lovers. It’s a movie about two lovers who happen to be vampires. Taking it a step further, it’s a movie about two people whose love not only spans the centuries, but whose observations about the world also span the ages. For all practical purposes Adam (Tom Hiddleston) and Eve (Tilda Swinton) are a wonderfully comfortable, old married couple.

At the film’s start Adam is a depressed musician living in Detroit (which, by the way, makes an inspired backdrop for a couple of vampires). Eve lives in Tangiers where she pals around with another immortal bloodsucker, Christopher Marlowe. While the film never discusses whether Adam and Eve are the Adam and Eve, Christopher Marlowe is the Christopher Marlowe and they do have fun at William Shakespeare’s illiterate ‘zombie’ expense.

Zombies are what they call the humans. Given the state of the world, which is partly to blame for Adam’s great malaise, zombies is the appropriate term. Worried about Adam, Eve travels to Detroit. They enjoy a blissfully, languorous reunion until it is unceremoniously interrupted by Eve’s younger sister Ava (Mia Wasikowska). While Adam, Eve and Christopher are very civilized vampires, who prefer to drink their blood as we would a fine port or sherry, Ava is still a neck biting, blood sucking, party girl. Trouble is sure to follow and it does.

Jarmusch’s script is absolutely delicious. Hiddleston, who is best known to American audiences as Loki in the Thor and Avenger movies, but is equally comfortable in a costume drama or doing a soft shoe a la Fred Astaire, is utterly transformed as Adam. Tilda Swinton is elegant and lovely as Eve. She is an excellent actress, but perhaps not as versatile as Hiddleston, as she only seems truly at home in a film like this or a Derek Jarman vehicle. Waskikowska is fine as Ava, but in playing this Lindsey Lohan-like vamp, the only person who could have probably messed it up would have been Lindsey Lohan. John Hurt is wonderful as Marlowe and Anton Yelchin turns out a really nice performance as Adam’s only zombie friend, Ian.

Only Lovers Left Alive is wonderfully written. What surprised me about it was its warmth. This could easily be an esoteric Jarmusch expository, but for me it’s a much more beautiful, more elegant and ultimately more powerful statement because of its warmth and love. It’s wonderfully literary and appropriately tinged with sadness and occasional flashes of humor.

Unfortunately Only Lovers Left Alive will likely be gone from theatres by the time this issue comes out. If anything written here sounds appealing, and certainly if you are a Jarmusch fan, you must seek this film out. Only Lovers Left Alive will most certainly be on my top ten list at year’s end.

Rated R for language and brief nudity.
Review by Michelle Keenan

The Railway Man ****1/2

Short Take: Harrowing but ultimately rewarding film about a tormented British P.O.W. and his confrontation with the Japanese officer who tortured him many years before.

Reel Take: Colin Firth is an actor who is worth watching in almost anything he does. When he has really high quality material as he did with The King’s Speech and A Single Man then the result is something truly special. You can now add The Railway Man to that list.

The film is set in 1980 and relates the true story of a British ex-P.O.W. interned by the Japanese during World War II who was systematically tortured and now, 38 years later, is trying to keep his life together. He has a passion for trains and through them meets his wife played by Nicole Kidman.

Things are fine at first but quickly deteriorate after reunions with his former regiment, all of whom were P.O.W.s at the same Japanese camp, result in nightmares of his imprisonment. These are rendered in vivid flashback sequences (with a younger cast of actors) that recall what happened. Their leader (Stellan Skarsgard) doesn’t know exactly what happened to him only that he was tortured and somehow managed to survive.

After his condition continues to worsen, Kidman approaches Skarsgard to ask for help in getting Firth to face his demons. Skarsgard discovers that the officer responsible for torturing him (Hiroyuki Shanada) is still alive and passes this information on. Although reluctant at first, Firth, after receiving an unusual and powerful wakeup call from Skarsgard, tracks the officer to the very P.O.W. camp where he had been interned which has now become a war museum.

Their initial confrontation and subsequent scenes together become the heart and soul of the movie. The performances from both men are pitch perfect while the revelations provide the audience with a powerful emotional roller coaster ride. These revelations are sometimes hard to take but, in the end, they prove to be ultimately rewarding.

The Railway Man is not the first film to deal with British prisoners in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. The most famous is David Lean’s classic 1957 epic The Bridge on the River Kwai but the movie The Railway Man most closely resembles is Japanese director Nagisha Oshima’s 1983 English language film Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence with David Bowie and Tom Conti. Both films deal with brutalized P.O.W.s and the key element in both films is the discovery of a hidden homemade radio. What sets The Railway Man apart is its theme of redemption and reconciliation.

This is old school filmmaking of a very high order with a strong storyline, remarkable performances, and direction that doesn’t get in the way and lets those involved in their various departments do their thing. While not overlong, I did find it slow in places with an overemphasis on the torture sequences but that doesn’t keep it from being one of the year’s best films. Co-star Nicole Kidman was instrumental in getting this film made and for that we owe her a debt of gratitude.

Rated R for disturbing prisoner of war violence.
Review by Chip Kaufmann