Short Movie Reviews

On a recent looong flight following the Great Circle Route, I got more than my fill of recent movies.

As an art form, filmmaking is pretty moribund.

A few pocket reviews: 

The King's Speech was an actors’ movie: a star turn for Colin Firth, who copped an Oscar. But the script and plot were weak. The premise was weak. Nothing important seemed to be at stake. The King of England is, after all, a figurehead. You just have to stand nicely for photos and read speeches. It is hard to believe anyone might not be up to the job, and hard to feel sympathy. Okay, so George/Bertie had a stammer. Why not, if necessary, use a voice double for the speeches? It’s done in Hollywood. Who would really care?

And then the plot twist that George finds out that the therapist is not a doctor, and acts betrayed. Given that he did not advertise himself as a doctor, why would this be an issue? Why, in the first place, would anyone think that a medical doctor would make a good speech therapist? An acting coach obviously makes more sense.

It got really hard to care. One could admire Firth’s acting, but that does not make the movie work as a whole.

I really wanted to see Mary Queen of Scots, because like probably everyone else who say Brooklyn, I’m keen on Saoirse Ronan. I did not like the idea of her as a queen, but that seems unfair typecasting. But the movie was really offensive. Just racist and sexist propaganda falsifying history. Falsifying history is a special sort of crime. Elizabeth’s most trusted counsellor was made to be African, and her main lady-in-waiting Asian. This was ridiculously ahistorical, and needlessly distracting in a story that largely hinged on the distinction between English and Scottish ethnicity. It made politics prior to art. Odd that it would not matter, when it was recently so important that actors cast for Disney’s live-action Aladdin all be from the Middle East. Even though Aladdin wasn’t—Disney’s original animated Aladdin falsified this in the first place. The makers of Mary Queen of Scots were scoring some political point about the ethnic English having no claim to English history. Which is a profoundly racist conceit. Try saying that about any other ethnic group.

Ethnic Scots have more rights. Unlike the English court, there seem to have been no African or Asian Scots. Mary was even given a Scots accent, although she had lived her life in France. It’s wicked to be English, but it is good to be Scottish.

Both Mary and Elizabeth, being women, were of course portrayed as strong, brave, honourable, and without fault: while all the men around them were pathetic, weak, cowardly, and duplicitous. Even when Elizabeth orders the all-good and honourable Mary executed, she explains in an awkward stage whisper/interior monologue that she does not want to do it; she is somehow forced into it by circumstances. So much for being strong, when responsibility must be taken.

There is inevitably one exception to all the men in the movie being weak and duplicitous. An African character cannot have any moral failings, even if male. Lord Randolph stands apart by staying true to his sovereign. And he always counsels both honourably and wisely. Pity there weren’t more Africans and Asians in England at the time, or the whole mess might have been averted. 

They Shall Not a Grow Old, following the current fashion, was anecdotal history by ordinary people caught up in events. Do we have Studs Terkel to blame for this? To my mind, anecdotal history, this sort of “eyewitness history,” is of little value. Why do we study history? It is to draw lessons, as with a parable. “those who do not study history are condemned to repeat it.” Appeasement does not work; perseverance in the face of defeat can win through; early victory can turn into eventual defeat; don’t tax without representation; and so forth.

We get none of this with anecdotal history. None of us really needs to know how to survive in the trenches. All that is left is voyeurism, like chasing an ambulance to ogle the carnage from an accident. Or like a sideshow at the circus. Unlike traditional history, there is no plot, no development. Just one damned thing after another, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. The movie was a technical accomplishment, but no more.

Stan and Ollie leaned heavily for its appeal on recreating Laurel and Hardy’s most famous skits. So what? All the originals are available online on YouTube; and nobody does Laurel and Hardy better than Laurel and Hardy. It felt lazy and exploitative. And again, a bit of a star turn for the actors, trying to make you believe. You never did, of course, but you were constantly distracted by the performance: did that sound like Hardy? Did that look like Laurel?

The film also suffered from the laugh track. Audience reactions were consistently shown as wildly enthusiastic—roaring with laughter. Again, this felt lazy and exploitative; it felt like begging for laughs. Laurel and Hardy skits tend to be endearing and whimsical rather than laugh-out-loud funny.

So, Steve Coogan and John C. Reilly put in fine performances. If that’s the sort of thing you go to movies for, you’ll like this. But as a movie, it had nothing else.